new file mode 100644
@@ -0,0 +1,237 @@
+= Hypertrace channel =
+
+Copyright (C) 2016 Lluís Vilanova <vilanova@ac.upc.edu>
+
+This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.
+See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
+
+
+The hypertrace channel allows guest code to emit events in QEMU (the host) using
+its tracing infrastructure (see "docs/trace.txt"). This works in both 'system'
+and 'user' modes. Therefore, hypertrace is to tracing what hypercalls are to
+system calls.
+
+The hypertrace channel can be used for various purposes:
+
+* Using guest code semantics to guide which QEMU events to trace at each point
+ in time. The example "Quick guide" below shows how to use this to identify
+ "regions of interest" in your guest code. It then uses these regions to trace
+ QEMU's behaviour during their execution (the example traces guest memory
+ accesses), without paying the price of tracing events outside the interest
+ regions.
+
+* Mark "progress points" in guest code (e.g., processed client requests,
+ scheduled processes, etc), so that they can be easily traced and correlated
+ between QEMU's various tracing events and the guest's own tracing
+ infrastructure (e.g., Linux's tracepoints).
+
+* You can also use regions of interest and progress points on the guest code to
+ time the performance of new TCG optimizations. Each hypertrace event comes
+ with a host timestamp, making it easy to compare the host execution times of
+ interesting guest code.
+
+Hypertrace features:
+
+* Works with 'system' and 'user' mode.
+
+* Minimal setup for the guest; QEMU provides support guest code libraries to
+ make 'system' mode with Linux and 'user' mode work out of the box.
+
+* Independent of guest architecture; the guest code uses accesses to special
+ memory regions, as opposed to redefining instruction semantics.
+
+* Negligible guest overhead; emitting a hypertrace event requires a single guest
+ memory access, making it as unobtrusive as possible.
+
+Warning: The hypertrace channel in 'system' mode only works in systems with
+support for PCI. You can get the list of guests with PCI support with 'grep
+pci.mak default-configs/*'.
+
+
+== Quick guide ==
+
+This shows an example of using the hypertrace channel to trace the guest memory
+accesses only in a specific guest code region, which is identified by calls to
+the hypertrace channel.
+
+We are going to trace memory accesses to disk using QEMU's "log" backend, and
+will use QEMU's "dtrace" (SystemTap) backend to ensure memory accesses are only
+traced in the guest code region of interest. The first time the guest code
+invokes the hypertrace channel, we will start tracing the
+"guest_mem_before_exec" event using dtrace, and then will disable it the second
+time around.
+
+Tracing is done with "log" because it is more efficient than using "dtrace" in
+high-volume events like memory accesses. If the event rate is low, you can
+ignore the "log" backend and simply use "dtrace"'s printf, while still using the
+hypertrace events to identify guest semantics.
+
+1. Set the tracing backends and number of arguments for the hypertrace events:
+
+ mkdir /tmp/qemu-build
+ cd /tmp/qemu-build
+ /path/to/qemu-source/configure \
+ --enable-trace-backends=dtrace,log \
+ --with-hypertrace-args=4 \
+ --prefix=/tmp/qemu-install
+ make -j install
+
+2. Enable the event "guest_mem_before_exec":
+
+ sed -i -e 's/disable vcpu tcg guest_mem_before/vcpu tcg guest_mem_before/g' /path/to/qemu-source/trace-events
+
+3. Compile QEMU:
+
+ make -C /tmp/qemu-build install -j
+
+4. Compile the guest support code:
+
+ make -C /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-linux-user/hypertrace/guest/user
+ make -C /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-softmmu/hypertrace/guest/user
+ make -C /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-softmmu/hypertrace/guest/linux-module
+
+ If you need to cross-compile the guest library, set the 'CC' variable:
+
+ make -C /tmp/qemu-build/mipsel-linux-user/hypertrace/guest/user CC=mipsel-gnu-linux-gcc
+
+5. Create a guest application using "qemu-hypertrace.h" to interact with the
+ hypertrace channel:
+
+ cat > /tmp/my-hypertrace.c <<\EOF
+ #include <stdio.h>
+ #include <errno.h>
+ #include <stdlib.h>
+ #include <string.h>
+ #include <qemu-hypertrace.h>
+
+
+ int main(int argc, char **argv)
+ {
+ char *base = NULL;
+ if (argc > 1) {
+ base = argv[1];
+ }
+
+ /* In 'user' mode this path must be the same we will use to start QEMU. */
+ if (qemu_hypertrace_init(base) != 0) {
+ perror("error: qemu_hypertrace_init");
+ abort();
+ }
+
+ /* Set additional event arguments (unused in this example) */
+ uint64_t client = 0;
+ uint64_t *data = qemu_hypertrace_data(client);
+ data[0] = 0xcafe;
+ data[1] = 0xdead;
+ data[2] = 0xbeef;
+
+ /* Emit event to start tracing */
+ qemu_hypertrace(client, 1);
+
+ /* Computation in between that we want to trace */
+ printf("Some computation...\n");
+
+ /* Emit event to stop tracing */
+ qemu_hypertrace(client, 0);
+ }
+ EOF
+
+ gcc -o /tmp/my-hypertrace-user /tmp/my-hypertrace.c \
+ /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-linux-user/hypertrace/guest/user/libqemu-hypertrace-guest.a \
+ -I/tmp/qemu-install/include -lpthread
+
+ gcc -o /tmp/my-hypertrace-softmmu /tmp/my-hypertrace.c \
+ /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-softmmu/hypertrace/guest/user/libqemu-hypertrace-guest.a \
+ -I/tmp/qemu-install/include -lpthread
+
+6. Create a SystemTap script to control event tracing:
+
+ cat > /tmp/my-hypertrace-script.stp <<\EOF
+ #!/usr/bin/env stap
+
+ %{
+ #include <linux/delay.h>
+ %}
+
+ function enable_mem:long()
+ %{
+ /* Tell QEMU's monitor to enable tracing */
+ char *argv[4] = {"/bin/sh", "-c", "echo 'trace-event guest_mem_before_exec on' | telnet localhost 1234", NULL};
+ printk(KERN_ERR "enable\n");
+ call_usermodehelper(argv[0], argv, NULL, UMH_WAIT_EXEC);
+ /* Wait for changes to apply */
+ msleep(1000);
+ printk(KERN_ERR "enabled\n");
+ STAP_RETURN(0);
+ %}
+
+ function disable_mem:long()
+ %{
+ char *argv[4] = {"/bin/sh", "-c", "echo 'trace-event guest_mem_before_exec off' | telnet localhost 1234", NULL};
+ printk(KERN_ERR "disable\n");
+ call_usermodehelper(argv[0], argv, NULL, UMH_WAIT_EXEC);
+ msleep(1000);
+ printk(KERN_ERR "disabled\n");
+ STAP_RETURN(0);
+ %}
+
+ probe process("/tmp/qemu-install/bin/qemu-*").mark("guest_hypertrace")
+ {
+ if ($arg1 == 1) {
+ enable_mem()
+ } else if ($arg1 == 0) {
+ disable_mem()
+ }
+ }
+ EOF
+
+7. Run a guest system with access to QEMU's hypertrace:
+
+ stap -g /tmp/my-hypertrace-script.stp -c \
+ '/tmp/qemu-install/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 \
+ -device hypertrace \
+ -monitor tcp:localhost:1234,server,nowait \
+ -trace enable=guest_hypertrace -D /dev/stdout \
+ ...'
+
+ And inside the VM:
+
+ sudo /tmp/my-hypertrace-softmmu
+
+ The result will be something like this:
+
+ VNC server running on ::1:5900
+ 23071@1473096085.744211:guest_hypertrace cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 arg1=1 arg2=0x000000000000cafe arg3=0x000000000000dead arg4=0x000000000000beef
+ 23071@1473096085.745763:guest_mem_before_trans cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 info=19
+ 23071@1473096085.745907:guest_mem_before_trans cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 info=3
+ 23071@1473096085.752368:guest_mem_before_trans cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 info=3
+ 23071@1473096085.752384:guest_mem_before_trans cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 info=19
+ 23071@1473096086.756117:guest_hypertrace cpu=0x5602e1f49c10 arg1=0 arg2=0x000000000000cafe arg3=0x000000000000dead arg4=0x000000000000beef
+
+To enable hypertrace when running in 'user' mode (standalone guest applications):
+
+ /tmp/qemu-install/bin/qemu-x86_64 \
+ -hypertrace /tmp/hypertrace \
+ -trace enable=guest* -D /dev/stdout \
+ /tmp/my-hypertrace-user /tmp/hypertrace
+
+You can also use hypertrace inside the guest's Linux kernel code with the
+provided guest module (see "/tmp/qemu-install/include/linux/qemu-hypertrace.h"):
+
+ sudo insmod /tmp/qemu-build/x86_64-softmmu/hypertrace/guest/linux-module/qemu-hypertrace.ko
+
+
+== Details ==
+
+To make it more efficient in terms of guest and host time, hypertrace provides
+two different memory areas (channels).
+
+The control channel is used by the guest to tell QEMU that new data is ready to
+be processed in the data channel. Writes to the control channel are intercepted
+by QEMU, which emits the "hypertrace" tracing event.
+
+The data channel is a regular memory buffer used by the guest to write
+additional event arguments before raising the event through the control channel.
+
+Both channels accept different "per-client offsets" to enable multiple guest
+threads or CPUs to use the hypertrace channel without having to synchronize.
@@ -5,6 +5,9 @@
This document describes the tracing infrastructure in QEMU and how to use it
for debugging, profiling, and observing execution.
+See "docs/hypertrace.txt" to correlate guest tracing events with those in the
+QEMU host.
+
== Quickstart ==
1. Build with the 'simple' trace backend:
Signed-off-by: Lluís Vilanova <vilanova@ac.upc.edu> --- docs/hypertrace.txt | 237 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ docs/tracing.txt | 3 + 2 files changed, 240 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/hypertrace.txt