|  | In-kernel memory-mapped I/O tracing | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Home page and links to optional user space tools: | 
|  |  | 
|  | http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MmioTrace | 
|  |  | 
|  | MMIO tracing was originally developed by Intel around 2003 for their Fault | 
|  | Injection Test Harness. In Dec 2006 - Jan 2007, using the code from Intel, | 
|  | Jeff Muizelaar created a tool for tracing MMIO accesses with the Nouveau | 
|  | project in mind. Since then many people have contributed. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Mmiotrace was built for reverse engineering any memory-mapped IO device with | 
|  | the Nouveau project as the first real user. Only x86 and x86_64 architectures | 
|  | are supported. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Out-of-tree mmiotrace was originally modified for mainline inclusion and | 
|  | ftrace framework by Pekka Paalanen <pq@iki.fi>. | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Preparation | 
|  | ----------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | Mmiotrace feature is compiled in by the CONFIG_MMIOTRACE option. Tracing is | 
|  | disabled by default, so it is safe to have this set to yes. SMP systems are | 
|  | supported, but tracing is unreliable and may miss events if more than one CPU | 
|  | is on-line, therefore mmiotrace takes all but one CPU off-line during run-time | 
|  | activation. You can re-enable CPUs by hand, but you have been warned, there | 
|  | is no way to automatically detect if you are losing events due to CPUs racing. | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Usage Quick Reference | 
|  | --------------------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | $ mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug | 
|  | $ echo mmiotrace > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer | 
|  | $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > mydump.txt & | 
|  | Start X or whatever. | 
|  | $ echo "X is up" > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_marker | 
|  | $ echo nop > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer | 
|  | Check for lost events. | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Usage | 
|  | ----- | 
|  |  | 
|  | Make sure debugfs is mounted to /sys/kernel/debug. If not, (requires root privileges) | 
|  | $ mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug | 
|  |  | 
|  | Check that the driver you are about to trace is not loaded. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Activate mmiotrace (requires root privileges): | 
|  | $ echo mmiotrace > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer | 
|  |  | 
|  | Start storing the trace: | 
|  | $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > mydump.txt & | 
|  | The 'cat' process should stay running (sleeping) in the background. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Load the driver you want to trace and use it. Mmiotrace will only catch MMIO | 
|  | accesses to areas that are ioremapped while mmiotrace is active. | 
|  |  | 
|  | During tracing you can place comments (markers) into the trace by | 
|  | $ echo "X is up" > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_marker | 
|  | This makes it easier to see which part of the (huge) trace corresponds to | 
|  | which action. It is recommended to place descriptive markers about what you | 
|  | do. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Shut down mmiotrace (requires root privileges): | 
|  | $ echo nop > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/current_tracer | 
|  | The 'cat' process exits. If it does not, kill it by issuing 'fg' command and | 
|  | pressing ctrl+c. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Check that mmiotrace did not lose events due to a buffer filling up. Either | 
|  | $ grep -i lost mydump.txt | 
|  | which tells you exactly how many events were lost, or use | 
|  | $ dmesg | 
|  | to view your kernel log and look for "mmiotrace has lost events" warning. If | 
|  | events were lost, the trace is incomplete. You should enlarge the buffers and | 
|  | try again. Buffers are enlarged by first seeing how large the current buffers | 
|  | are: | 
|  | $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/buffer_size_kb | 
|  | gives you a number. Approximately double this number and write it back, for | 
|  | instance: | 
|  | $ echo 128000 > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/buffer_size_kb | 
|  | Then start again from the top. | 
|  |  | 
|  | If you are doing a trace for a driver project, e.g. Nouveau, you should also | 
|  | do the following before sending your results: | 
|  | $ lspci -vvv > lspci.txt | 
|  | $ dmesg > dmesg.txt | 
|  | $ tar zcf pciid-nick-mmiotrace.tar.gz mydump.txt lspci.txt dmesg.txt | 
|  | and then send the .tar.gz file. The trace compresses considerably. Replace | 
|  | "pciid" and "nick" with the PCI ID or model name of your piece of hardware | 
|  | under investigation and your nick name. | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | How Mmiotrace Works | 
|  | ------------------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | Access to hardware IO-memory is gained by mapping addresses from PCI bus by | 
|  | calling one of the ioremap_*() functions. Mmiotrace is hooked into the | 
|  | __ioremap() function and gets called whenever a mapping is created. Mapping is | 
|  | an event that is recorded into the trace log. Note, that ISA range mappings | 
|  | are not caught, since the mapping always exists and is returned directly. | 
|  |  | 
|  | MMIO accesses are recorded via page faults. Just before __ioremap() returns, | 
|  | the mapped pages are marked as not present. Any access to the pages causes a | 
|  | fault. The page fault handler calls mmiotrace to handle the fault. Mmiotrace | 
|  | marks the page present, sets TF flag to achieve single stepping and exits the | 
|  | fault handler. The instruction that faulted is executed and debug trap is | 
|  | entered. Here mmiotrace again marks the page as not present. The instruction | 
|  | is decoded to get the type of operation (read/write), data width and the value | 
|  | read or written. These are stored to the trace log. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Setting the page present in the page fault handler has a race condition on SMP | 
|  | machines. During the single stepping other CPUs may run freely on that page | 
|  | and events can be missed without a notice. Re-enabling other CPUs during | 
|  | tracing is discouraged. | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Trace Log Format | 
|  | ---------------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | The raw log is text and easily filtered with e.g. grep and awk. One record is | 
|  | one line in the log. A record starts with a keyword, followed by keyword | 
|  | dependant arguments. Arguments are separated by a space, or continue until the | 
|  | end of line. The format for version 20070824 is as follows: | 
|  |  | 
|  | Explanation	Keyword	Space separated arguments | 
|  | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | read event	R	width, timestamp, map id, physical, value, PC, PID | 
|  | write event	W	width, timestamp, map id, physical, value, PC, PID | 
|  | ioremap event	MAP	timestamp, map id, physical, virtual, length, PC, PID | 
|  | iounmap event	UNMAP	timestamp, map id, PC, PID | 
|  | marker		MARK	timestamp, text | 
|  | version		VERSION	the string "20070824" | 
|  | info for reader	LSPCI	one line from lspci -v | 
|  | PCI address map	PCIDEV	space separated /proc/bus/pci/devices data | 
|  | unk. opcode	UNKNOWN	timestamp, map id, physical, data, PC, PID | 
|  |  | 
|  | Timestamp is in seconds with decimals. Physical is a PCI bus address, virtual | 
|  | is a kernel virtual address. Width is the data width in bytes and value is the | 
|  | data value. Map id is an arbitrary id number identifying the mapping that was | 
|  | used in an operation. PC is the program counter and PID is process id. PC is | 
|  | zero if it is not recorded. PID is always zero as tracing MMIO accesses | 
|  | originating in user space memory is not yet supported. | 
|  |  | 
|  | For instance, the following awk filter will pass all 32-bit writes that target | 
|  | physical addresses in the range [0xfb73ce40, 0xfb800000[ | 
|  |  | 
|  | $ awk '/W 4 / { adr=strtonum($5); if (adr >= 0xfb73ce40 && | 
|  | adr < 0xfb800000) print; }' | 
|  |  | 
|  |  | 
|  | Tools for Developers | 
|  | -------------------- | 
|  |  | 
|  | The user space tools include utilities for: | 
|  | - replacing numeric addresses and values with hardware register names | 
|  | - replaying MMIO logs, i.e., re-executing the recorded writes | 
|  |  | 
|  |  |