Hi Steve,

On Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 06:38:15PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 15:05:25 -0800
> Guenter Roeck <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > > >         /*
> > > >          * Use ftrace_number_of_pages to determine how many pages were
> > > >          * allocated
> > > >          */
> > > >         pages = ftrace_number_of_pages;
> > > > 
> > > >         start_pg = ftrace_allocate_pages(count);
> > > >         if (!start_pg)
> > > >                 return -ENOMEM;
> > > > 
> > > >         /* ftrace_allocate_pages() increments ftrace_number_of_pages */
> > > >         pages = ftrace_number_of_pages - pages;
> > > >   
> > > 
> > > That might work, assuming that the code updating ftrace_number_of_pages
> > > is (mutex) protected. I don't immediately see that, and the
> > > "mutex_lock(&ftrace_lock);" right after the above code makes me a bit
> > > concerned.
> > >   
> > 
> > One way to avoid the locking problem without potentially risky code changes
> > would be to pass a pointer to pages to ftrace_allocate_pages() and to
> > ftrace_allocate_records(), and to update it from there. I tested that and
> > confirmed that it works.
> 
> I was originally going to suggest that, but when looking at the code, I
> noticed that these variables could be useful. They are only updated on boot
> up, module load, module unload and when module memory is freed.
> 
> But looking into the module code, these updates are done outside of the
> module_mutex. This means these values need to be converted to atomics as
> they are updated without any protection.
> 
> Yeah, better to just get the value from passing in a parameter to both
> ftrace_allocate_pages() and to ftrace_allocate_records().
> 
> Something like:
> 
>       unsigend long pages = 0;
> 
>       [..]
>       start_pg = ftrace_allocate_pages(count, &pages);
> 
> [..]
>       ftrace_allocate_pages(unsigned long num_to_init, unsigned long 
> *num_pages) {
>               [..]
>                       cnt = ftrace_allocate_records(pg, num_to_init, 
> num_pages);
> 
> And have ftrace_allocte_records() have:
> 
>       pages = 1 << order;
>       *num_pages += pages;
>       ftrace_number_of_pages += pages;
> 

That is exactly what I tested. With that, I assume I can drop the
code to update pages in ftrace_process_locs(), inclusing the warning
backtraces. I'll send v2 with those changes.

Thanks,
Guenter

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