ring-buffer: Remove ring_buffer_read_prepare_sync()

When the ring buffer was first introduced, reading the non-consuming
"trace" file required disabling the writing of the ring buffer. To make
sure the writing was fully disabled before iterating the buffer with a
non-consuming read, it would set the disable flag of the buffer and then
call an RCU synchronization to make sure all the buffers were
synchronized.

The function ring_buffer_read_start() originally  would initialize the
iterator and call an RCU synchronization, but this was for each individual
per CPU buffer where this would get called many times on a machine with
many CPUs before the trace file could be read. The commit 72c9ddfd4c5bf
("ring-buffer: Make non-consuming read less expensive with lots of cpus.")
separated ring_buffer_read_start into ring_buffer_read_prepare(),
ring_buffer_read_sync() and then ring_buffer_read_start() to allow each of
the per CPU buffers to be prepared, call the read_buffer_read_sync() once,
and then the ring_buffer_read_start() for each of the CPUs which made
things much faster.

The commit 1039221cc278 ("ring-buffer: Do not disable recording when there
is an iterator") removed the requirement of disabling the recording of the
ring buffer in order to iterate it, but it did not remove the
synchronization that was happening that was required to wait for all the
buffers to have no more writers. It's now OK for the buffers to have
writers and no synchronization is needed.

Remove the synchronization and put back the interface for the ring buffer
iterator back before commit 72c9ddfd4c5bf was applied.

Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250630180440.3eabb514@batman.local.home
Reported-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Fixes: 1039221cc278 ("ring-buffer: Do not disable recording when there is an iterator")
Tested-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (Google) <rostedt@goodmis.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/ring_buffer.h b/include/linux/ring_buffer.h
index cd7f0ae26615..bc90c3c7b5fd 100644
--- a/include/linux/ring_buffer.h
+++ b/include/linux/ring_buffer.h
@@ -152,9 +152,7 @@ ring_buffer_consume(struct trace_buffer *buffer, int cpu, u64 *ts,
 		    unsigned long *lost_events);
 
 struct ring_buffer_iter *
-ring_buffer_read_prepare(struct trace_buffer *buffer, int cpu, gfp_t flags);
-void ring_buffer_read_prepare_sync(void);
-void ring_buffer_read_start(struct ring_buffer_iter *iter);
+ring_buffer_read_start(struct trace_buffer *buffer, int cpu, gfp_t flags);
 void ring_buffer_read_finish(struct ring_buffer_iter *iter);
 
 struct ring_buffer_event *