Documentation/trace/ftrace.txt says

  buffer_size_kb:

        This sets or displays the number of kilobytes each CPU
        buffer can hold. The tracer buffers are the same size
        for each CPU. The displayed number is the size of the
        CPU buffer and not total size of all buffers. The
        trace buffers are allocated in pages (blocks of memory
        that the kernel uses for allocation, usually 4 KB in size).
        If the last page allocated has room for more bytes
        than requested, the rest of the page will be used,
        making the actual allocation bigger than requested.
        ( Note, the size may not be a multiple of the page size
          due to buffer management overhead. )

        This can only be updated when the current_tracer
        is set to "nop".

But it's incorrect. currently total memory consumption is
'buffer_size_kb x CPUs x 2'.

Why two times difference is there? because ftrace implicitly allocate
the buffer for max latency too.

That makes sad result when admin want to use large buffer. (If admin
want full logging and makes detail analysis). example, If admin
have 24 CPUs machine and write 200MB to buffer_size_kb, the system
consume ~10GB memory (200MB x 24 x 2). umm.. 5GB memory waste is
usually unacceptable.

Fortunatelly, almost all users don't use max latency feature.
The max latency buffer can be disabled easily.

This patch shrink buffer size of the max latency buffer if
unnecessary.

Signed-off-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
LKML-Reference: <20100701104554.DA2D.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>