Re: [PATCH] perf_event: Adjust frequency and unthrottle fornon-group-leader events

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Oct 14 2009 - 06:55:37 EST


On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 16:58 +1100, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> The loop in perf_ctx_adjust_freq checks the frequency of sampling
> event counters, and adjusts the event interval and unthrottles the
> event if required, and resets the interrupt count for the event.
> However, at present it only looks at group leaders.
>
> This means that a sampling event that is not a group leader will
> eventually get throttled, once its interrupt count reaches
> sysctl_perf_event_sample_rate/HZ --- and that is guaranteed to
> happen, if the event is active for long enough, since the interrupt
> count never gets reset. Once it is throttled it never gets
> unthrottled, so it basically just stops working at that point.
>
> This fixes it by making perf_ctx_adjust_freq use ctx->event_list
> rather than ctx->group_list. The existing spin_lock/spin_unlock
> around the loop makes it unnecessary to put rcu_read_lock/
> rcu_read_unlock around the list_for_each_entry_rcu().
>
> Reported-by: Mark W. Krentel <krentel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@xxxxxxxxx>

Looks good, thanks Paul!

Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx>

> ---
> Apparently this bug was only seen on powerpc, and not on x86. I have
> no idea why.

Weird, should work the same way on both of them.


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