[CFR][CFT] counter(9): new API for faster and raceless counters

[Pawel Jakub Dawidek]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 08:25:23PM -0400, Gary Palmer wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 03, 2013 at 01:26:07AM +0200, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 01, 2013 at 03:51:28PM +0400, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
> > >   Hi!
> > > 
> > >   Together with Konstantin Belousov (kib@) we developed a new API that is
> > > initially purposed for (but not limited to) collecting statistical
> > > data in kernel.
> > 
> > Is there any plan to implement universal way of exporting those
> > statistics out of the kernel?
> > 
> > Solaris has a framework for in-kernel statistics, which are exported via
> > kstat tool. For ZFS I export them via sysctl. If you have ZFS loaded you
> > can try 'sysctl kstat'.
> > 
> > It would be nice for counter_u64_alloc() to take additional argument
> > 'name' and to create sysctl for the counter automatically. We could then
> > slowly start migrating userland tools to use sysctls (or some wrapper
> > userland API), but we immediately make those statistics available for
> > use in scripts.
> 
> Sorry for potentially turning this into a bikeshed, but is sysctl the
> best interface for this?  It is great for scripts as the CLI is already
> there, however it is not a bulk interface so grabbing all the ZFS
> statistics takes quite a few trips through our system call handler - 438
> on my 9.1 box for "sysctl kstat" (found via ktrace and then
> kdump | grep -c SCTL), which is not ideal when there are only 87
> stats there. (5 calls per OID returned and 3 initial calls to get set up)
> 
> I'm not sure I have a better alternative other than a geom style bulk
> export via XML or some other format, however I wanted to raise it for
> consideration.  I wouldn't hold up the checkin of the code for this,
> however if another way of gathering the data is needed/desired then it
> would be good to get it in before people get too used to the sysctl 
> way.  

XML is no go for me, as it is not really easy to use in scripts.
We would need to create a tool to parse it and then I'd much prefer to
import my API for dealing with name/value pairs that could be used in so
many more places.

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek                       http://www.wheelsystems.com
FreeBSD committer                         http://www.FreeBSD.org
Am I Evil? Yes, I Am!                     http://tupytaj.pl
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch/attachments/20130404/9053674b/attachment.sig>