rtla/timerlat: Add auto-analysis support to timerlat top
authorDaniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@kernel.org>
Tue, 31 Jan 2023 15:38:54 +0000 (16:38 +0100)
committerSteven Rostedt (Google) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Thu, 2 Feb 2023 15:48:04 +0000 (10:48 -0500)
commit5def33df84d2326ebf5f29ae9ddc702a4593c337
tree7238e4b5ad7d053a07e188e6bf9f4768aa595b12
parent27e348b221f6a78cbe86e7def8e2611f84509211
rtla/timerlat: Add auto-analysis support to timerlat top

Currently, timerlat top displays the timerlat tracer latency results, saving
the intuitive timerlat trace for the developer to analyze.

This patch goes a step forward in the automaton of the scheduling latency
analysis by providing a summary of the root cause of a latency higher than
the passed "stop tracing" parameter if the trace stops.

The output is intuitive enough for non-expert users to have a general idea
of the root cause by looking at each factor's contribution percentage while
keeping the technical detail in the output for more expert users to start
an in dept debug or to correlate a root cause with an existing one.

The terminology is in line with recent industry and academic publications
to facilitate the understanding of both audiences.

Here is one example of tool output:
 ----------------------------------------- %< -----------------------------------------------------
  # taskset -c 0 timerlat -a 40 -c 1-23 -q
                                     Timer Latency
    0 00:00:12   |          IRQ Timer Latency (us)        |         Thread Timer Latency (us)
  CPU COUNT      |      cur       min       avg       max |      cur       min       avg       max
    1 #12322     |        0         0         1        15 |       10         3         9        31
    2 #12322     |        3         0         1        12 |       10         3         9        23
    3 #12322     |        1         0         1        21 |        8         2         8        34
    4 #12322     |        1         0         1        17 |       10         2        11        33
    5 #12322     |        0         0         1        12 |        8         3         8        25
    6 #12322     |        1         0         1        14 |       16         3        11        35
    7 #12322     |        0         0         1        14 |        9         2         8        29
    8 #12322     |        1         0         1        22 |        9         3         9        34
    9 #12322     |        0         0         1        14 |        8         2         8        24
   10 #12322     |        1         0         0        12 |        9         3         8        24
   11 #12322     |        0         0         0        15 |        6         2         7        29
   12 #12321     |        1         0         0        13 |        5         3         8        23
   13 #12319     |        0         0         1        14 |        9         3         9        26
   14 #12321     |        1         0         0        13 |        6         2         8        24
   15 #12321     |        1         0         1        15 |       12         3        11        27
   16 #12318     |        0         0         1        13 |        7         3        10        24
   17 #12319     |        0         0         1        13 |       11         3         9        25
   18 #12318     |        0         0         0        12 |        8         2         8        20
   19 #12319     |        0         0         1        18 |       10         2         9        28
   20 #12317     |        0         0         0        20 |        9         3         8        34
   21 #12318     |        0         0         0        13 |        8         3         8        28
   22 #12319     |        0         0         1        11 |        8         3        10        22
   23 #12320     |       28         0         1        28 |       41         3        11        41
  rtla timerlat hit stop tracing
  ## CPU 23 hit stop tracing, analyzing it ##
  IRQ handler delay:            27.49 us (65.52 %)
  IRQ latency:     28.13 us
  Timerlat IRQ duration:      9.59 us (22.85 %)
  Blocking thread:      3.79 us (9.03 %)
objtool:49256          3.79 us
    Blocking thread stacktrace
-> timerlat_irq
-> __hrtimer_run_queues
-> hrtimer_interrupt
-> __sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt
-> sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt
-> asm_sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt
-> _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore
-> cgroup_rstat_flush_locked
-> cgroup_rstat_flush_irqsafe
-> mem_cgroup_flush_stats
-> mem_cgroup_wb_stats
-> balance_dirty_pages
-> balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited_flags
-> btrfs_buffered_write
-> btrfs_do_write_iter
-> vfs_write
-> __x64_sys_pwrite64
-> do_syscall_64
-> entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Thread latency:     41.96 us (100%)

  The system has exit from idle latency!
    Max timerlat IRQ latency from idle: 17.48 us in cpu 4
  Saving trace to timerlat_trace.txt
 ----------------------------------------- >% -----------------------------------------------------

In this case, the major factor was the delay suffered by the IRQ handler
that handles timerlat wakeup: 65.52 %. This can be caused by the
current thread masking interrupts, which can be seen in the blocking
thread stacktrace: the current thread (objtool:49256) disabled interrupts
via raw spin lock operations inside mem cgroup, while doing write
syscall in a btrfs file system.

A simple search for the function name on Google shows that this is
a legit case for disabling the interrupts:

  cgroup: Use irqsave in cgroup_rstat_flush_locked()
  lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20220301122143.1521823-2-bigeasy@linutronix.de/

The output also prints other reasons for the latency root cause, such as:

  - an IRQ that happened before the IRQ handler that caused delays
  - The interference from NMI, IRQ, Softirq, and Threads

The details about how these factors affect the scheduling latency
can be found here:

   https://bristot.me/demystifying-the-real-time-linux-latency/

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/3d45f40e630317f51ac6d678e2d96d310e495729.1675179318.git.bristot@kernel.org
Cc: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@kernel.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (Google) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
tools/tracing/rtla/src/timerlat_top.c