printk() - It's Old, What Can We Do to Make It Young Again?
printk() has been the tool for debugging the Linux kernel and for being the display mechanism for Linux as long as Linux has been around. It's the first thing one sees as the life of the kernel begins …
| Talk Title | printk() - It's Old, What Can We Do to Make It Young Again? |
| Speakers | Steven Rostedt (Open Source Engineer, VMware Inc), Sergey Senozhatsky (Senior Engineer, Samsung Electronics) |
| Conference | Open Source Summit Europe |
| Conf Tag | |
| Location | Prague, Czech Republic |
| Date | Oct 21-27, 2017 |
| URL | Talk Page |
| Slides | Talk Slides |
| Video | |
printk() has been the tool for debugging the Linux kernel and for being the display mechanism for Linux as long as Linux has been around. It’s the first thing one sees as the life of the kernel begins, from the kernel banner and the last message at shutdown. It’s critical as people take pictures of a kernel oops to send to the kernel developers to fix a bug, or to display on social media when that oops happens on the monitor on the back of an airplane seat in front of you.But printk() is not a trivial utility. It serves many functionalities and some of them can be conflicting. Today with Linux running on machines with hundreds of CPUs, printk() can actually be the cause of live locks. This talk will first give a review of what was discussed onMonday in “printk() - the most useful tool now showing its age”, but will also include various ideas to fix its issues, and hopefully what will be accepted at Kernel Summit.
