linux/Documentation/trace/events-msr.txt
Andi Kleen 7f47d8cc03 x86, tracing, perf: Add trace point for MSR accesses
For debugging low level code interacting with the CPU it is often
useful to trace the MSR read/writes. This gives a concise summary of
PMU and other operations.

perf has an ad-hoc way to do this using trace_printk, but it's
somewhat limited (and also now spews ugly boot messages when enabled)

Instead define real trace points for all MSR accesses.

This adds three new trace points: read_msr and write_msr and rdpmc.

They also report if the access faulted (if *_safe is used)

This allows filtering and triggering on specific MSR values, which
allows various more advanced debugging techniques.

All the values are well defined in the CPU documentation.

The trace can be post processed with
Documentation/trace/postprocess/decode_msr.py to add symbolic MSR
names to the trace.

I only added it to native MSR accesses in C, not paravirtualized or in
entry*.S (which is not too interesting)

Originally the patch kit moved the MSRs out of line.  This uses an
alternative approach recommended by Steven Rostedt of only moving the
trace calls out of line, but open coding the access to the jump label.

Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Vince Weaver <vincent.weaver@maine.edu>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1449018060-1742-3-git-send-email-andi@firstfloor.org
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
2015-12-06 12:56:10 +01:00

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The x86 kernel supports tracing most MSR (Model Specific Register) accesses.
To see the definition of the MSRs on Intel systems please see the SDM
at http://www.intel.com/sdm (Volume 3)
Available trace points:
/sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/msr/
Trace MSR reads
read_msr
msr: MSR number
val: Value written
failed: 1 if the access failed, otherwise 0
Trace MSR writes
write_msr
msr: MSR number
val: Value written
failed: 1 if the access failed, otherwise 0
Trace RDPMC in kernel
rdpmc
The trace data can be post processed with the postprocess/decode_msr.py script
cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace | decode_msr.py /usr/src/linux/include/asm/msr-index.h
to add symbolic MSR names.