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authorTom Zanussi <zanussi@us.ibm.com>2006-01-08 01:02:30 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>2006-01-08 20:13:50 -0800
commitdf49af8f3392e96ddbc9cf6dd81fbdc0496e1b44 (patch)
treee4a8ce3657f1148f279623fe6048735de9c15c39 /Documentation
parente6c08367b8fc6dce6dfd1106f53f6ef28215b313 (diff)
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[PATCH] relayfs: add Documentation on global relay buffers
Documentation update for creating global buffers. Signed-off-by: Tom Zanussi <zanussi@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/relayfs.txt21
1 files changed, 20 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/relayfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/relayfs.txt
index 4221b3a..d9693cb 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/relayfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/relayfs.txt
@@ -143,7 +143,7 @@ Here's a summary of the API relayfs provides to in-kernel clients:
subbuf_start(buf, subbuf, prev_subbuf, prev_padding)
buf_mapped(buf, filp)
buf_unmapped(buf, filp)
- create_buf_file(filename, parent, mode, buf)
+ create_buf_file(filename, parent, mode, buf, is_global)
remove_buf_file(dentry)
helper functions:
@@ -367,6 +367,25 @@ create_buf_file() is defined, remove_buf_file() must also be defined;
it's responsible for deleting the file(s) created in create_buf_file()
and is called during relay_close().
+The create_buf_file() implementation can also be defined in such a way
+as to allow the creation of a single 'global' buffer instead of the
+default per-cpu set. This can be useful for applications interested
+mainly in seeing the relative ordering of system-wide events without
+the need to bother with saving explicit timestamps for the purpose of
+merging/sorting per-cpu files in a postprocessing step.
+
+To have relay_open() create a global buffer, the create_buf_file()
+implementation should set the value of the is_global outparam to a
+non-zero value in addition to creating the file that will be used to
+represent the single buffer. In the case of a global buffer,
+create_buf_file() and remove_buf_file() will be called only once. The
+normal channel-writing functions e.g. relay_write() can still be used
+- writes from any cpu will transparently end up in the global buffer -
+but since it is a global buffer, callers should make sure they use the
+proper locking for such a buffer, either by wrapping writes in a
+spinlock, or by copying a write function from relayfs_fs.h and
+creating a local version that internally does the proper locking.
+
See the 'exported-relayfile' examples in the relay-apps tarball for
examples of creating and using relay files in debugfs.
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