mmiotrace: add user documentation

Signed-off-by: Pekka Paalanen <pq@iki.fi>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 153 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/tracers/mmiotrace.txt b/Documentation/tracers/mmiotrace.txt
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+                In-kernel memory-mapped I/O tracing
+
+
+Home page and links to optional user space tools:
+
+        http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MmioTrace
+
+MMIO tracing was originally developed by Intel around 2003 for their Fault
+Injection Test Harness. In Dec 2006 - Jan 2007, using the code from Intel,
+Jeff Muizelaar created a tool for tracing MMIO accesses with the Nouveau
+project in mind. Since then many people have contributed.
+
+Mmiotrace was built for reverse engineering any memory-mapped IO device with
+the Nouveau project as the first real user. Only x86 and x86_64 architectures
+are supported.
+
+Out-of-tree mmiotrace was originally modified for mainline inclusion and
+ftrace framework by Pekka Paalanen <pq@iki.fi>.
+
+
+Preparation
+-----------
+
+Mmiotrace feature is compiled in by the CONFIG_MMIOTRACE option. Tracing is
+disabled by default, so it is safe to have this set to yes. SMP systems are
+supported, but tracing is unreliable and may miss events if more than one CPU
+is on-line, therefore mmiotrace takes all but one CPU off-line during run-time
+activation [not implemented].
+
+
+Usage Quick Reference
+---------------------
+
+$ mount -t debugfs debugfs /debug
+$ echo mmiotrace > /debug/tracing/current_tracer
+$ cat /debug/tracing/trace_pipe > mydump.txt &
+Start X or whatever.
+$ echo "X is up" > /debug/tracing/marker
+$ echo none > /debug/tracing/current_tracer
+Check kernel log.
+
+
+Usage
+-----
+
+Make sure debugfs is mounted to /debug. If not, (requires root privileges)
+$ mount -t debugfs debugfs /debug
+
+Check that the driver you are about to trace is not loaded.
+
+Activate mmiotrace (requires root privileges):
+$ echo mmiotrace > /debug/tracing/current_tracer
+
+Start storing the trace:
+$ cat /debug/tracing/trace_pipe > mydump.txt &
+The 'cat' process should stay running (sleeping) in the background.
+
+Load the driver you want to trace and use it. Mmiotrace will only catch MMIO
+accesses to areas that are ioremapped while mmiotrace is active.
+
+[Unimplemented feature:]
+During tracing you can place comments (markers) into the trace by
+$ echo "X is up" > /debug/tracing/marker
+This makes it easier to see which part of the (huge) trace corresponds to
+which action. It is recommended to place descriptive markers about what you
+do.
+
+Shut down mmiotrace (requires root privileges):
+$ echo none > /debug/tracing/current_tracer
+The 'cat' process exits. If it does not, kill it by 'fg' and pressing ctrl+c.
+
+[This feature is not implemented yet!]
+Check your kernel log. If there are messages about mmiotrace losing events,
+this is due to buffer overrun, and the trace is incomplete. You should enlarge
+the buffers and try again. [How?]
+
+If you are doing a trace for a driver project, e.g. Nouveau, you should also
+do the following before sending your results:
+$ lspci -vvv > lspci.txt
+$ dmesg > dmesg.txt
+$ tar zcf pciid-nick-mmiotrace.tar.gz mydump.txt lspci.txt dmesg.txt
+and then send the .tar.gz file. The trace compresses considerably. Replace
+"pciid" and "nick" with the PCI ID or model name of your piece of hardware
+under investigation and your nick name.
+
+
+How Mmiotrace Works
+-------------------
+
+Access to hardware IO-memory is gained by mapping addresses from PCI bus by
+calling one of the ioremap_*() functions. Mmiotrace is hooked into the
+__ioremap() function and gets called whenever a mapping is created. Mapping is
+an event that is recorded into the trace log. Note, that ISA range mappings
+are not caught, since the mapping always exists and is returned directly.
+
+MMIO accesses are recorded via page faults. Just before __ioremap() returns,
+the mapped pages are marked as not present. Any access to the pages causes a
+fault. The page fault handler calls mmiotrace to handle the fault. Mmiotrace
+marks the page present, sets TF flag to achieve single stepping and exits the
+fault handler. The instruction that faulted is executed and debug trap is
+entered. Here mmiotrace again marks the page as not present. The instruction
+is decoded to get the type of operation (read/write), data width and the value
+read or written. These are stored to the trace log.
+
+Setting the page present in the page fault handler has a race condition on SMP
+machines. During the single stepping other CPUs may run freely on that page
+and events can be missed without a notice. Re-enabling other CPUs during
+tracing is discouraged.
+
+
+Trace Log Format
+----------------
+
+The raw log is text and easily filtered with e.g. grep and awk. One record is
+one line in the log. A record starts with a keyword, followed by keyword
+dependant arguments. Arguments are separated by a space, or continue until the
+end of line. The format for version 20070824 is as follows:
+
+Explanation     Keyword Space separated arguments
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+read event      R       width, timestamp, map id, physical, value, PC, PID
+write event     W       width, timestamp, map id, physical, value, PC, PID
+ioremap event   MAP     timestamp, map id, physical, virtual, length, PC, PID
+iounmap event   UNMAP   timestamp, map id, PC, PID
+marker          MARK    timestamp, text
+version         VERSION the string "20070824"
+info for reader LSPCI   one line from lspci -v
+PCI address map PCIDEV  space separated /proc/bus/pci/devices data
+unk. opcode     UNKNOWN timestamp, map id, physical, data, PC, PID
+
+Timestamp is in seconds with decimals. Physical is a PCI bus address, virtual
+is a kernel virtual address. Width is the data width in bytes and value is the
+data value. Map id is an arbitrary id number identifying the mapping that was
+used in an operation. PC is the program counter and PID is process id. PC is
+zero if it is not recorded. PID is always zero as tracing MMIO accesses
+originating in user space memory is not yet supported.
+
+For instance, the following awk filter will pass all 32-bit writes that target
+physical addresses in the range [0xfb73ce40, 0xfb800000[
+
+$ awk '/W 4 / { adr=strtonum($5); if (adr >= 0xfb73ce40 &&
+adr < 0xfb800000) print; }'
+
+
+Tools for Developers
+--------------------
+
+The user space tools include utilities for:
+- replacing numeric addresses and values with hardware register names
+- replaying MMIO logs, i.e., re-executing the recorded writes
+
+