[lttng-dev] Changed scheduling when using lttng

[Mats Liljegren]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Mathieu Desnoyers
<mathieu.desnoyers at efficios.com> wrote:
> Hi Mats,
>
> The ring buffer uses the standard "timers" in the kernel to flush the
> buffers periodically, which prevents your kernel from going into nohz.
> Originally, when implemented as a patch on the Linux kernel, the ring
> buffer design had hooks in the nohz kernel events to disable this timer
> when going to nohz. Now, given LTTng is a kernel module, it cannot
> modify the kernel code, and no callback mechanism exists for nohz.
>
> There are two ways to work around this issue that does not require
> modifying the Linux kernel:
>
> 1) Implement RING_BUFFER_WAKEUP_BY_WRITER within lttng-modules ring
>    buffer.
>
>   it should become used by default if the following is specified at
>   channel creation:
>
>   lttng enable-channel mychan -k --read-timer 0
>
>   It can be an issue if you want to trace page fault, and instrument
>   code sensitive to lock usage (when using WAKEUP_BY_WRITER, the tracer
>   is not lock-free anymore). It's the main reason why I have not
>   implemented this mode yet: making sure the tracer never breaks the
>   kernel in this mode is trickier.
>
> 2) use deferrable timers. It's a hack, but it should allow our timers to
>    be inhibited when the cpus go in nohz.
>
> Sorry, low-impact on nohz has not really been on our sponsor's priority
> lists so far.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mathieu

I tried number 1 using --read-timer 0, but "lttng stop" hanged at
"Waiting for data availability", producing lots of dots...

Would it be possible to let some other (not using nohz mode) CPU to
flush the buffers?

/Mats