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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/timers/timer_stats.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/timers/timer_stats.txt | 73 |
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diff --git a/Documentation/timers/timer_stats.txt b/Documentation/timers/timer_stats.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..20d368c59814 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/timers/timer_stats.txt | |||
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| 1 | timer_stats - timer usage statistics | ||
| 2 | ------------------------------------ | ||
| 3 | |||
| 4 | timer_stats is a debugging facility to make the timer (ab)usage in a Linux | ||
| 5 | system visible to kernel and userspace developers. If enabled in the config | ||
| 6 | but not used it has almost zero runtime overhead, and a relatively small | ||
| 7 | data structure overhead. Even if collection is enabled runtime all the | ||
| 8 | locking is per-CPU and lookup is hashed. | ||
| 9 | |||
| 10 | timer_stats should be used by kernel and userspace developers to verify that | ||
| 11 | their code does not make unduly use of timers. This helps to avoid unnecessary | ||
| 12 | wakeups, which should be avoided to optimize power consumption. | ||
| 13 | |||
| 14 | It can be enabled by CONFIG_TIMER_STATS in the "Kernel hacking" configuration | ||
| 15 | section. | ||
| 16 | |||
| 17 | timer_stats collects information about the timer events which are fired in a | ||
| 18 | Linux system over a sample period: | ||
| 19 | |||
| 20 | - the pid of the task(process) which initialized the timer | ||
| 21 | - the name of the process which initialized the timer | ||
| 22 | - the function where the timer was intialized | ||
| 23 | - the callback function which is associated to the timer | ||
| 24 | - the number of events (callbacks) | ||
| 25 | |||
| 26 | timer_stats adds an entry to /proc: /proc/timer_stats | ||
| 27 | |||
| 28 | This entry is used to control the statistics functionality and to read out the | ||
| 29 | sampled information. | ||
| 30 | |||
| 31 | The timer_stats functionality is inactive on bootup. | ||
| 32 | |||
| 33 | To activate a sample period issue: | ||
| 34 | # echo 1 >/proc/timer_stats | ||
| 35 | |||
| 36 | To stop a sample period issue: | ||
| 37 | # echo 0 >/proc/timer_stats | ||
| 38 | |||
| 39 | The statistics can be retrieved by: | ||
| 40 | # cat /proc/timer_stats | ||
| 41 | |||
| 42 | The readout of /proc/timer_stats automatically disables sampling. The sampled | ||
| 43 | information is kept until a new sample period is started. This allows multiple | ||
| 44 | readouts. | ||
| 45 | |||
| 46 | Sample output of /proc/timer_stats: | ||
| 47 | |||
| 48 | Timerstats sample period: 3.888770 s | ||
| 49 | 12, 0 swapper hrtimer_stop_sched_tick (hrtimer_sched_tick) | ||
| 50 | 15, 1 swapper hcd_submit_urb (rh_timer_func) | ||
| 51 | 4, 959 kedac schedule_timeout (process_timeout) | ||
| 52 | 1, 0 swapper page_writeback_init (wb_timer_fn) | ||
| 53 | 28, 0 swapper hrtimer_stop_sched_tick (hrtimer_sched_tick) | ||
| 54 | 22, 2948 IRQ 4 tty_flip_buffer_push (delayed_work_timer_fn) | ||
| 55 | 3, 3100 bash schedule_timeout (process_timeout) | ||
| 56 | 1, 1 swapper queue_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn) | ||
| 57 | 1, 1 swapper queue_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn) | ||
| 58 | 1, 1 swapper neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer) | ||
| 59 | 1, 2292 ip __netdev_watchdog_up (dev_watchdog) | ||
| 60 | 1, 23 events/1 do_cache_clean (delayed_work_timer_fn) | ||
| 61 | 90 total events, 30.0 events/sec | ||
| 62 | |||
| 63 | The first column is the number of events, the second column the pid, the third | ||
| 64 | column is the name of the process. The forth column shows the function which | ||
| 65 | initialized the timer and in parantheses the callback function which was | ||
| 66 | executed on expiry. | ||
| 67 | |||
| 68 | Thomas, Ingo | ||
| 69 | |||
| 70 | Added flag to indicate 'deferrable timer' in /proc/timer_stats. A deferrable | ||
| 71 | timer will appear as follows | ||
| 72 | 10D, 1 swapper queue_delayed_work_on (delayed_work_timer_fn) | ||
| 73 | |||
