linux/Documentation/irqflags-tracing.txt
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   1=======================
   2IRQ-flags state tracing
   3=======================
   4
   5:Author: started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
   6
   7The "irq-flags tracing" feature "traces" hardirq and softirq state, in
   8that it gives interested subsystems an opportunity to be notified of
   9every hardirqs-off/hardirqs-on, softirqs-off/softirqs-on event that
  10happens in the kernel.
  11
  12CONFIG_TRACE_IRQFLAGS_SUPPORT is needed for CONFIG_PROVE_SPIN_LOCKING
  13and CONFIG_PROVE_RW_LOCKING to be offered by the generic lock debugging
  14code. Otherwise only CONFIG_PROVE_MUTEX_LOCKING and
  15CONFIG_PROVE_RWSEM_LOCKING will be offered on an architecture - these
  16are locking APIs that are not used in IRQ context. (the one exception
  17for rwsems is worked around)
  18
  19Architecture support for this is certainly not in the "trivial"
  20category, because lots of lowlevel assembly code deal with irq-flags
  21state changes. But an architecture can be irq-flags-tracing enabled in a
  22rather straightforward and risk-free manner.
  23
  24Architectures that want to support this need to do a couple of
  25code-organizational changes first:
  26
  27- add and enable TRACE_IRQFLAGS_SUPPORT in their arch level Kconfig file
  28
  29and then a couple of functional changes are needed as well to implement
  30irq-flags-tracing support:
  31
  32- in lowlevel entry code add (build-conditional) calls to the
  33  trace_hardirqs_off()/trace_hardirqs_on() functions. The lock validator
  34  closely guards whether the 'real' irq-flags matches the 'virtual'
  35  irq-flags state, and complains loudly (and turns itself off) if the
  36  two do not match. Usually most of the time for arch support for
  37  irq-flags-tracing is spent in this state: look at the lockdep
  38  complaint, try to figure out the assembly code we did not cover yet,
  39  fix and repeat. Once the system has booted up and works without a
  40  lockdep complaint in the irq-flags-tracing functions arch support is
  41  complete.
  42- if the architecture has non-maskable interrupts then those need to be
  43  excluded from the irq-tracing [and lock validation] mechanism via
  44  lockdep_off()/lockdep_on().
  45
  46In general there is no risk from having an incomplete irq-flags-tracing
  47implementation in an architecture: lockdep will detect that and will
  48turn itself off. I.e. the lock validator will still be reliable. There
  49should be no crashes due to irq-tracing bugs. (except if the assembly
  50changes break other code by modifying conditions or registers that
  51shouldn't be)
  52
  53