This allows for userspace applications to also flip the switch. echo 0 > debugfs/tracing/tracing_on disables the tracing. echo 1 > /debugfs/tracing/tracing_on enables it. Note, this does not disable or enable any tracers. It only sets or clears a flag that needs to be set in order for the ring buffers to write to their buffers. It is a global flag, and affects all ring buffers. The buffers start out with tracing_on enabled. There are now three flags that control recording into the buffers: tracing_on: which affects all ring buffer tracers. buffer->record_disabled: which affects an allocated buffer, which may be set if an anomaly is detected, and tracing is disabled. cpu_buffer->record_disabled: which is set by tracing_stop() or if an anomaly is detected. tracing_start can not reenable this if an anomaly occurred. The userspace debugfs/tracing/tracing_enabled is implemented with tracing_stop() but the user space code can not enable it if the kernel called tracing_stop(). Userspace can enable the tracing_on even if the kernel disabled it. It is just a switch used to stop tracing if a condition was hit. tracing_on is not for protecting critical areas in the kernel nor is it for stopping tracing if an anomaly occurred. This is because userspace can reenable it at any time. Side effect: With this patch, I discovered a dead variable in ftrace.c called tracing_on. This patch removes it. Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt ÖüI¹–/x