Thread (37 messages) 37 messages, 8 authors, 2024-08-09

Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] tracing/kprobes: Use APIs that matches symbols without .XXX suffix

From: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Date: 2024-08-08 15:52:34
Also in: live-patching, lkml

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 11:59:00 +0200
Petr Mladek [off-list ref] wrote:
On Wed 2024-08-07 20:48:48, Song Liu wrote:
quoted
quoted
On Aug 7, 2024, at 8:33 AM, Sami Tolvanen [off-list ref] wrote:

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 3:08 AM Masami Hiramatsu [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
On Wed, 7 Aug 2024 00:19:20 +0000
Song Liu [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
Do you mean we do not want patch 3/3, but would like to keep 1/3 and part
of 2/3 (remove the _without_suffix APIs)? If this is the case, we are
undoing the change by Sami in [1], and thus may break some tracing tools.
What tracing tools may be broke and why?
This was a few years ago when we were first adding LTO support, but
the unexpected suffixes in tracing output broke systrace in Android,
presumably because the tools expected to find specific function names
without suffixes. I'm not sure if systrace would still be a problem
today, but other tools might still make assumptions about the function
name format. At the time, we decided to filter out the suffixes in all
user space visible output to avoid these issues.
quoted
For this suffix problem, I would like to add another patch to allow probing on
suffixed symbols. (It seems suffixed symbols are not available at this point)

The problem is that the suffixed symbols maybe a "part" of the original function,
thus user has to carefully use it.
quoted
Sami, could you please share your thoughts on this?
Sami, I would like to know what problem you have on kprobes.
The reports we received back then were about registering kprobes for
static functions, which obviously failed if the compiler added a
suffix to the function name. This was more of a problem with ThinLTO
and Clang CFI at the time because the compiler used to rename _all_
static functions, but one can obviously run into the same issue with
just LTO.
I think newer LLVM/clang no longer add suffixes to all static functions
with LTO and CFI. So this may not be a real issue any more?

If we still need to allow tracing without suffix, I think the approach
in this patch set is correct (sort syms based on full name,
Yes, we should allow to find the symbols via the full name, definitely.
quoted
remove suffixes in special APIs during lookup).
Just an idea. Alternative solution would be to make make an alias
without the suffix when there is only one symbol with the same
name.

It would be complementary with the patch adding aliases for symbols
with the same name, see
https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231204214635.2916691-1-alessandro.carminati@gmail.com (local)
I think this is the best idea what we can do for tracing/stacktrace with
same-name symbols. But the root cause here is a bit different, that's why
I rejected the last patch.

With compiler suffixes, the source line aliases should remove those
suffixes and add new suffix like below.

1234 t name_show.llvm.12345678
1234 t name_show@kernel_irq_irqdesc_c_264
I would allow to find the symbols with and without the suffix using
a single API.
I wonder why we need it? for ftrace filter?

The same symbol name does not mean the same function prototype.
For the kprobes (and fprobes, ftraces too) user must specify which
actual symbol is what you want to probe.

Of course if user can say "hey kprobe, probe name_show", but that is
unclear (not unique symbol) so kprobe will reject it. If there is
.llvm suffix, user can specify one of them. But it is still unclear
to user where in the source code the symbol is actually defined.
So eventually, we need the debuginfo or this @suffix.

Thank you,

Best Regards,
Petr

-- 
Masami Hiramatsu (Google) [off-list ref]
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