[PATCH] kprobes: Mark OPTPROBES n/a for powerpc

Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli ananth at in.ibm.com
Thu Jul 16 20:56:39 AEST 2015


Kprobes uses a breakpoint instruction to trap into execution flow
and the probed instruction is single-stepped from an alternate location.

On some architectures like x86, under certain conditions, the OPTPROBES
feature enables replacing the probed instruction with a jump instead,
resulting in a significant perfomance boost (one single-step exception
is bypassed for each kprobe).

Powerpc has an in-kernel instruction emulator. Kprobes on powerpc uses
this emulator already and bypasses the single-step exception, with a
lot less complexity.

Hence, mark OPTPROBES n/a for powerpc.

Signed-off-by: Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli <ananth at in.ibm.com>
---
 .../features/debug/optprobes/arch-support.txt      |    2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/features/debug/optprobes/arch-support.txt b/Documentation/features/debug/optprobes/arch-support.txt
index b8999d8..0a3ca33 100644
--- a/Documentation/features/debug/optprobes/arch-support.txt
+++ b/Documentation/features/debug/optprobes/arch-support.txt
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
     |       nios2: | TODO |
     |    openrisc: | TODO |
     |      parisc: | TODO |
-    |     powerpc: | TODO |
+    |     powerpc: | n/a  |
     |        s390: | TODO |
     |       score: | TODO |
     |          sh: | TODO |



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