tracing: Add an 'overwrite' trace_option.

Add an "overwrite" trace_option for ftrace to control whether the buffer should
be overwritten on overflow or not. The default remains to overwrite old events
when the buffer is full. This patch adds the option to instead discard newest
events when the buffer is full. This is useful to get a snapshot of traces just
after enabling traces. Dropping the current event is also a simpler code path.

Signed-off-by: David Sharp <dhsharp@google.com>
LKML-Reference: <1291844807-15481-1-git-send-email-dhsharp@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt b/Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt
index 67f1cc473257..1ebc24cf9a55 100644
--- a/Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt
+++ b/Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt
@@ -454,6 +454,11 @@ x494] <- /root/a.out[+0x4a8] <- /lib/libc-2.7.so[+0x1e1a6]
                    latencies, as described in "Latency
                    trace format".
 
+  overwrite - This controls what happens when the trace buffer is
+              full. If "1" (default), the oldest events are
+              discarded and overwritten. If "0", then the newest
+              events are discarded.
+
 ftrace_enabled
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