DOC: internals: short explanation on how thread_exec_ctx works

The goal is to have enough info to be able to automatically enable the
feature on future rulesets or subsystems.
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Willy Tarreau 2026-03-12 18:23:01 +01:00
parent f7820bcbaa
commit 4e8cf26ab6

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2026-03-12 - thread execution context
Thread execution context (thread_exec_ctx) is a combination of type and pointer
that are set in the current running thread at th_ctx->exec_ctx when entering
certain processing (tasks, sample fetch functions, actions, CLI keywords etc).
They're refined along execution, so that a task such as process_stream could
temporarily switch to a converter while evaluating an expression and switch
back to process_stream. They are reported in thread dumps and are mixed with
caller locations for memory profiling. As such they are intentionally not too
precise in order to avoid an explosion of the number of buckets. At the moment,
the level of granularity it provides is sufficient to try to narrow a
misbehaving origin down to a list of keywords. The context types can currently
be:
- something registered via an initcall, with the initcall's location
- something registered via an ha_caller, with the caller's location
- an explicit sample fetch / converter / action / CLI keyword list
- an explicit function (mainly used for actions without keywords)
- a task / tasklet (no distinction is made), using the ->process pointer
- a filter (e.g. compression), via flt_conf, reporting name
- a mux (via the mux_ops, reporting the name)
- an applet (e.g. cache, stats, CLI)
A macro EXEC_CTX_MAKE(type, pointer) makes a thread_exec_ctx from such
values.
A macro EXEC_CTX_NO_RET(ctx, statement) calls a void statement under the
specified context.
A macro EXEC_CTX_WITH_RET(ctx, expr) calls an expression under the specified
context.
Most locations were modified to directly use these macros on the fly, by
retrieving the context from where it was set on the element being evaluated
(e.g. an action rule contains the context inherited by the action keyword
that was used to create it).
In tools.c, chunk_append_thread_ctx() tries to decode the given exec_ctx and
appends it into the provided buffer. It's used by ha_thread_dump_one() and
cli_io_handler_show_activity() for memory profiling. In this latter case,
the detected thread_ctx are reported in the output under brackets prefixed
with "[via ...]" to distinguish call paths to the same allocators.
A good way to test if a context is properly reported is to place a bleeding
malloc() call into one of the monitored functions, e.g.:
DISGUISE(malloc(8));
and issue "show profiling memory" after stressing the function. Its context
must appear on the right with the number of calls.