The tracing "instances" directory can create sub tracing buffers
with mkdir, and remove them with rmdir. As a mkdir will also create
all the files and directories that control the sub buffer the inode
mutexes need to be released before this is done, to avoid deadlocks.
It is better to let the tracing system unlock the inode mutexes before
calling the functions that create the files within the new directory
(or deletes the files from the one being destroyed).
Now that tracing has been converted over to tracefs, the tracefs file
system can be modified to accommodate this feature. It still releases
the locks, but the filesystem itself can take care of the ugly
business and let the user just do what it needs.
The tracing system now attaches a descriptor to the directory dentry
that can have userspace create or remove sub directories. If this
descriptor does not exist for a dentry, then that dentry can not be
used to create other directories. This descriptor holds a mkdir and
rmdir method that only takes a character string as an argument.
The tracefs file system will first make a copy of the dentry name
before releasing the locks. Then it will pass the copied name to the
methods. It is up to the tracing system that supplied the methods to
handle races with duplicate names and such as all the inode mutexes
would be released when the functions are called.
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Add a separate file system to handle the tracing directory. Currently it
is part of debugfs, but that is starting to show its limits.
One thing is that in order to access the tracing infrastructure, you need
to mount debugfs. As that includes debugging from all sorts of sub systems
in the kernel, it is not considered advisable to mount such an all
encompassing debugging system.
Having the tracing system in its own file systems gives access to the
tracing sub system without needing to include all other systems.
Another problem with tracing using the debugfs system is that the
instances use mkdir to create sub buffers. debugfs does not support mkdir
from userspace so to implement it, special hacks were used. By controlling
the file system that the tracing infrastructure uses, this can be properly
done without hacks.
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Steven Rostedt (Red Hat)