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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2011-04-30 09:15:40 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2011-04-30 09:15:40 -0700
commit3fd9952df4964fac7d5868ba48eadcc9dae3ba46 (patch)
treeac5ad53b758329fbd5d38972a26fb8380092a649 /Documentation
parent1be6a1f89f131e9c3d22f819ec542be9cda8c9e3 (diff)
parent5035b20fa5cd146b66f5f89619c20a4177fb736d (diff)
Merge branch 'fixes-2.6.39' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/wq
* 'fixes-2.6.39' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/wq: workqueue: fix deadlock in worker_maybe_bind_and_lock() workqueue: Document debugging tricks Fix up trivial spelling conflict in kernel/workqueue.c
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/workqueue.txt40
1 files changed, 40 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/workqueue.txt b/Documentation/workqueue.txt
index 01c513fac40e..a0b577de918f 100644
--- a/Documentation/workqueue.txt
+++ b/Documentation/workqueue.txt
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ CONTENTS
4. Application Programming Interface (API)
5. Example Execution Scenarios
6. Guidelines
+7. Debugging
1. Introduction
@@ -379,3 +380,42 @@ If q1 has WQ_CPU_INTENSIVE set,
* Unless work items are expected to consume a huge amount of CPU
cycles, using a bound wq is usually beneficial due to the increased
level of locality in wq operations and work item execution.
+
+
+7. Debugging
+
+Because the work functions are executed by generic worker threads
+there are a few tricks needed to shed some light on misbehaving
+workqueue users.
+
+Worker threads show up in the process list as:
+
+root 5671 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:07 0:00 [kworker/0:1]
+root 5672 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:07 0:00 [kworker/1:2]
+root 5673 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:12 0:00 [kworker/0:0]
+root 5674 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:13 0:00 [kworker/1:0]
+
+If kworkers are going crazy (using too much cpu), there are two types
+of possible problems:
+
+ 1. Something beeing scheduled in rapid succession
+ 2. A single work item that consumes lots of cpu cycles
+
+The first one can be tracked using tracing:
+
+ $ echo workqueue:workqueue_queue_work > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_event
+ $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > out.txt
+ (wait a few secs)
+ ^C
+
+If something is busy looping on work queueing, it would be dominating
+the output and the offender can be determined with the work item
+function.
+
+For the second type of problems it should be possible to just check
+the stack trace of the offending worker thread.
+
+ $ cat /proc/THE_OFFENDING_KWORKER/stack
+
+The work item's function should be trivially visible in the stack
+trace.