[PATCH 19/19] [INCOMPLETE] ARM: make return_address available for ARM_UNWIND

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 11:44:14AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:

[ I got an error with linux-arm-kernel at list.infradead.org and had to
remove from CC ]

Blame Arnd :)

On Fri, 2013-01-25 at 16:26 +0000, Dave Martin wrote:

quoted

However, if the purpose if making return_address() notrace is just to
prevent infinite recursion, where finite recursion is safe, then it
feels fixable as described above.

Steven, do you know whether such an approach might be safe?

I rewrote the function trace recursion code (see linux-next). The
function tracer wont recurse on itself. If the return_address() is only
used by callbacks and not directly by the mcount(ftrace_caller), then
after the first trace, ftrace wont let recursion of the callback. IOW,
callbacks of ftrace don't need to worry about re-entrancy at the same
context level (but do for different contexts, ie. normal, irq, softirq
and NMI).

(commit edc15cafcbfa3d73f819cae99885a2e35e4cbce5 in linux-next and
friends)

Cool.  Are you aware of return_address being used elsewhere?  Currently
I'm not aware of anything else which uses it, and grep is not finding
any calls outside ftrace.h that I can see.

Cheers
---Dave