Merge tag 'docs-4.17' of git://git.lwn.net/linux

Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet:
 "There's been a fair amount of activity in Documentation/ this time
  around:

   - Lots of work aligning Documentation/ABI with reality, done by
     Aishwarya Pant.

   - The trace documentation has been converted to RST by Changbin Du

   - I thrashed up kernel-doc to deal with a parsing issue and to try to
     make the code more readable. It's still a 20+-year-old Perl hack,
     though.

   - Lots of other updates, typo fixes, and more"

* tag 'docs-4.17' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (82 commits)
  Documentation/process: update FUSE project website
  docs: kernel-doc: fix parsing of arrays
  dmaengine: Fix spelling for parenthesis in dmatest documentation
  dmaengine: Make dmatest.rst indeed reST compatible
  dmaengine: Add note to dmatest documentation about supported channels
  Documentation: magic-numbers: Fix typo
  Documentation: admin-guide: add kvmconfig, xenconfig and tinyconfig commands
  Input: alps - Update documentation for trackstick v3 format
  Documentation: Mention why %p prints ptrval
  COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files
  COPYING: create a new file with points to the Kernel license files
  Input: trackpoint: document sysfs interface
  xfs: Change URL for the project in xfs.txt
  char/bsr: add sysfs interface documentation
  acpi: nfit: document sysfs interface
  block: rbd: update sysfs interface
  Documentation/sparse: fix typo
  Documentation/CodingStyle: Add an example for braces
  docs/vm: update 00-INDEX
  kernel-doc: Remove __sched markings
  ...

1 files changed, 83 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/trace/hwlat_detector.rst b/Documentation/trace/hwlat_detector.rst
new file mode 100644
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+=========================
+Hardware Latency Detector
+=========================
+
+Introduction
+-------------
+
+The tracer hwlat_detector is a special purpose tracer that is used to
+detect large system latencies induced by the behavior of certain underlying
+hardware or firmware, independent of Linux itself. The code was developed
+originally to detect SMIs (System Management Interrupts) on x86 systems,
+however there is nothing x86 specific about this patchset. It was
+originally written for use by the "RT" patch since the Real Time
+kernel is highly latency sensitive.
+
+SMIs are not serviced by the Linux kernel, which means that it does not
+even know that they are occuring. SMIs are instead set up by BIOS code
+and are serviced by BIOS code, usually for "critical" events such as
+management of thermal sensors and fans. Sometimes though, SMIs are used for
+other tasks and those tasks can spend an inordinate amount of time in the
+handler (sometimes measured in milliseconds). Obviously this is a problem if
+you are trying to keep event service latencies down in the microsecond range.
+
+The hardware latency detector works by hogging one of the cpus for configurable
+amounts of time (with interrupts disabled), polling the CPU Time Stamp Counter
+for some period, then looking for gaps in the TSC data. Any gap indicates a
+time when the polling was interrupted and since the interrupts are disabled,
+the only thing that could do that would be an SMI or other hardware hiccup
+(or an NMI, but those can be tracked).
+
+Note that the hwlat detector should *NEVER* be used in a production environment.
+It is intended to be run manually to determine if the hardware platform has a
+problem with long system firmware service routines.
+
+Usage
+------
+
+Write the ASCII text "hwlat" into the current_tracer file of the tracing system
+(mounted at /sys/kernel/tracing or /sys/kernel/tracing). It is possible to
+redefine the threshold in microseconds (us) above which latency spikes will
+be taken into account.
+
+Example::
+
+	# echo hwlat > /sys/kernel/tracing/current_tracer
+	# echo 100 > /sys/kernel/tracing/tracing_thresh
+
+The /sys/kernel/tracing/hwlat_detector interface contains the following files:
+
+  - width - time period to sample with CPUs held (usecs)
+            must be less than the total window size (enforced)
+  - window - total period of sampling, width being inside (usecs)
+
+By default the width is set to 500,000 and window to 1,000,000, meaning that
+for every 1,000,000 usecs (1s) the hwlat detector will spin for 500,000 usecs
+(0.5s). If tracing_thresh contains zero when hwlat tracer is enabled, it will
+change to a default of 10 usecs. If any latencies that exceed the threshold is
+observed then the data will be written to the tracing ring buffer.
+
+The minimum sleep time between periods is 1 millisecond. Even if width
+is less than 1 millisecond apart from window, to allow the system to not
+be totally starved.
+
+If tracing_thresh was zero when hwlat detector was started, it will be set
+back to zero if another tracer is loaded. Note, the last value in
+tracing_thresh that hwlat detector had will be saved and this value will
+be restored in tracing_thresh if it is still zero when hwlat detector is
+started again.
+
+The following tracing directory files are used by the hwlat_detector:
+
+in /sys/kernel/tracing:
+
+ - tracing_threshold	- minimum latency value to be considered (usecs)
+ - tracing_max_latency	- maximum hardware latency actually observed (usecs)
+ - tracing_cpumask	- the CPUs to move the hwlat thread across
+ - hwlat_detector/width	- specified amount of time to spin within window (usecs)
+ - hwlat_detector/window	- amount of time between (width) runs (usecs)
+
+The hwlat detector's kernel thread will migrate across each CPU specified in
+tracing_cpumask between each window. To limit the migration, either modify
+tracing_cpumask, or modify the hwlat kernel thread (named [hwlatd]) CPU
+affinity directly, and the migration will stop.