On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 8:32 AM Steven Rostedt [off-list ref] wrote:

On Tue, 1 Aug 2023 11:20:36 -0400
Steven Rostedt [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

The solution was to come up with ftrace_regs, which just means it has all
the registers to extract the arguments of a function and nothing more. Most

This isn't 100% true. The ftrace_regs may hold a fully filled pt_regs. As
the FTRACE_WITH_REGS callbacks still get passed a ftrace_regs pointer. They
will do:

        void callback(..., struct ftrace_regs *fregs) {
                struct pt_regs *regs = ftrace_get_regs(fregs);


Where ftrace_get_regs() will return the pt_regs only if it is fully filled.
If it is not, then it returns NULL. This was what the x86 maintainers
agreed with.

arch/arm64/include/asm/ftrace.h:#define arch_ftrace_get_regs(regs) NULL

Ouch. That's very bad.
We care a lot about bpf running well on arm64.

If you guys decide to convert fprobe to ftrace_regs please
make it depend on kconfig or something.
bpf side needs full pt_regs.
It's not about access to args.
pt_regs is passed from bpf prog further into all kinds of perf event
functions including stack walking.
I think ORC unwinder might depend on availability of all registers.
Other perf helpers might need it too. Like perf_event_output.
bpf progs need to access arguments, no doubt about that.
If ftrace_regs have them exactly in the same offsets as in pt_regs
that might work transparently for bpf progs, but, I'm afraid,
it's not the case on all archs.
So we need full pt_regs to make sure all paths are still working.

Adding Jiri and others.