Merge tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-tracegrafted

Pull tracing fixes from Steven Rostedt:

 - Fix error output of boot instance creation failure

   Currently if a boot instance creation fails, instead of printing out
   the name of the instance that failed, it prints "(null)". That is
   because it prints "cur_str" that had already been processed by
   strsep(). Print the saved name instead.

   While at it, print the error code of the failure.

 - Fix use-after-free for same named historgrams

   Histograms can be named so that they can be used in multiple events.
   But if the named histogram has a variable attached, the second event
   that uses the named histogram which duplicates it and needs to free
   the original after duplication leaves the old variable in place and
   still visible. If another histogram uses than variable, it will use
   the stale one which will try to reference the freed duplicate
   histogram and crash the kernel.

   Free the duplicate variables along with the duplicated histogram
   data.

 - Check return value of kthread_run() in event self test

   The events self tests uses a kthread for testing but does not check
   if it succeeded in creating a kthread. If the kthread creation were
   to fail, the code will still try to call kthread_stop() on the error
   returned.

 - Fix race between reading trace_pipe and updating subbuffer size

   If a user is reading the trace_pipe file at the same time they update
   the ring buffer sub-buffer size, can cause the trace_pipe read to
   read stale data. Add trace_access_lock() around updating the ring
   buffer sub-buffer size.

 - Fix eventfs_inode on failure path in creation of the events directory

   In the creation of the "events" directory, if after allocating the
   eventfs_inode a failure is detected, it calls cleanup_ei() which
   calls free_ei(). The free_ei() will test if eventfs_inode being freed
   has no children. It is a bug if it does. But on the failure case of
   the creation of the "events" directory, the children lists have not
   yet been initialized and the free will trigger a warning because
   list_empty() on an uninitialized list returns false.

   Move the initialization into init_ei() where it makes more sense and
   makes sure that a created eventfs_inode has its lists initialized
   upon creation.

 - Check return value of kthread_run() in ftrace direct sample code

   The sample code that shows how to use the ftrace direct calls does
   not test the return of kthread_run() to see if it succeeds. Return a
   failure if the kthread_run() doesn't succeed.

 - Clear user events state on fork in case of alloc failure

   On fork, the child gets a pointer to the parent's user events state.
   It makes a copy of it then updates the child's pointer to it. But if
   the allocation fails, the duplication function leaves the child with
   a pointer to its parent's descriptor. When the child cleans up its
   data, it will free the parent's descriptor while the parent is still
   using it.

   In the duplication function, set the child's user_event_mm to NULL
   before testing if the allocation succeeded, and when it exits it will
   not free the parent's descriptor.

 - Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap

   simple_ring_buffer_swap_reader_page() starts with retry set to 8 and
   post-decrements it only after a failed link replacement. On the final
   attempt, a successful replacement leaves retry at zero, while a
   failed replacement leaves it at -1.

   But the check for success expects the retry value to be non-zero and
   exits with an error on zero. This is the opposite result. Fix it.

 - Fail nicely when the remote swap_reader_page() returns an error

   Currently, if the swap_reader_page() of a remote buffer fails, it
   triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE() and continues normally. Instead, have it
   exit with an error and a pr_warn() print instead of a full WARNING.

* tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace:
  ring-buffer: Stop remote reader update when page swap fails
  tracing: Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap
  tracing/user_events: Clear copied tracing state before fork duplication
  samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-multi-modify
  samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-modify
  eventfs: Initialize ei->children and ei->list in init_ei()
  tracing: Fix use-after-free in trace_pipe read on sub-buffer order change
  tracing: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop()
  tracing: Fix use-after-free with same-name named triggers
  tracing: Fix logged instance name on creation failure

1 files changed, 131 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/cache-policies.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/cache-policies.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..13da4d831
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/cache-policies.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+=============================
+Guidance for writing policies
+=============================
+
+Try to keep transactionality out of it.  The core is careful to
+avoid asking about anything that is migrating.  This is a pain, but
+makes it easier to write the policies.
+
+Mappings are loaded into the policy at construction time.
+
+Every bio that is mapped by the target is referred to the policy.
+The policy can return a simple HIT or MISS or issue a migration.
+
+Currently there's no way for the policy to issue background work,
+e.g. to start writing back dirty blocks that are going to be evicted
+soon.
+
+Because we map bios, rather than requests it's easy for the policy
+to get fooled by many small bios.  For this reason the core target
+issues periodic ticks to the policy.  It's suggested that the policy
+doesn't update states (eg, hit counts) for a block more than once
+for each tick.  The core ticks by watching bios complete, and so
+trying to see when the io scheduler has let the ios run.
+
+
+Overview of supplied cache replacement policies
+===============================================
+
+multiqueue (mq)
+---------------
+
+This policy is now an alias for smq (see below).
+
+The following tunables are accepted, but have no effect::
+
+	'sequential_threshold <#nr_sequential_ios>'
+	'random_threshold <#nr_random_ios>'
+	'read_promote_adjustment <value>'
+	'write_promote_adjustment <value>'
+	'discard_promote_adjustment <value>'
+
+Stochastic multiqueue (smq)
+---------------------------
+
+This policy is the default.
+
+The stochastic multi-queue (smq) policy addresses some of the problems
+with the multiqueue (mq) policy.
+
+The smq policy (vs mq) offers the promise of less memory utilization,
+improved performance and increased adaptability in the face of changing
+workloads.  smq also does not have any cumbersome tuning knobs.
+
+Users may switch from "mq" to "smq" simply by appropriately reloading a
+DM table that is using the cache target.  Doing so will cause all of the
+mq policy's hints to be dropped.  Also, performance of the cache may
+degrade slightly until smq recalculates the origin device's hotspots
+that should be cached.
+
+Memory usage
+^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The mq policy used a lot of memory; 88 bytes per cache block on a 64
+bit machine.
+
+smq uses 28bit indexes to implement its data structures rather than
+pointers.  It avoids storing an explicit hit count for each block.  It
+has a 'hotspot' queue, rather than a pre-cache, which uses a quarter of
+the entries (each hotspot block covers a larger area than a single
+cache block).
+
+All this means smq uses ~25bytes per cache block.  Still a lot of
+memory, but a substantial improvement nonetheless.
+
+Level balancing
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+mq placed entries in different levels of the multiqueue structures
+based on their hit count (~ln(hit count)).  This meant the bottom
+levels generally had the most entries, and the top ones had very
+few.  Having unbalanced levels like this reduced the efficacy of the
+multiqueue.
+
+smq does not maintain a hit count, instead it swaps hit entries with
+the least recently used entry from the level above.  The overall
+ordering being a side effect of this stochastic process.  With this
+scheme we can decide how many entries occupy each multiqueue level,
+resulting in better promotion/demotion decisions.
+
+Adaptability:
+The mq policy maintained a hit count for each cache block.  For a
+different block to get promoted to the cache its hit count has to
+exceed the lowest currently in the cache.  This meant it could take a
+long time for the cache to adapt between varying IO patterns.
+
+smq doesn't maintain hit counts, so a lot of this problem just goes
+away.  In addition it tracks performance of the hotspot queue, which
+is used to decide which blocks to promote.  If the hotspot queue is
+performing badly then it starts moving entries more quickly between
+levels.  This lets it adapt to new IO patterns very quickly.
+
+Performance
+^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Testing smq shows substantially better performance than mq.
+
+cleaner
+-------
+
+The cleaner writes back all dirty blocks in a cache to decommission it.
+
+Examples
+========
+
+The syntax for a table is::
+
+	cache <metadata dev> <cache dev> <origin dev> <block size>
+	<#feature_args> [<feature arg>]*
+	<policy> <#policy_args> [<policy arg>]*
+
+The syntax to send a message using the dmsetup command is::
+
+	dmsetup message <mapped device> 0 sequential_threshold 1024
+	dmsetup message <mapped device> 0 random_threshold 8
+
+Using dmsetup::
+
+	dmsetup create blah --table "0 268435456 cache /dev/sdb /dev/sdc \
+	    /dev/sdd 512 0 mq 4 sequential_threshold 1024 random_threshold 8"
+	creates a 128GB large mapped device named 'blah' with the
+	sequential threshold set to 1024 and the random_threshold set to 8.