On Tue,  8 Jul 2025 20:54:49 +0900
"Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" [off-list ref] wrote:

From: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@kernel.org>

With CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y and PAHOLE_HAS_BTF_TAG=y, `__user` is
converted to `__attribute__((btf_type_tag("user")))`. In this case,
some syscall events have it for __user data, like below;

/sys/kernel/tracing # cat events/syscalls/sys_enter_openat/format
name: sys_enter_openat
ID: 720
format:
        field:unsigned short common_type;       offset:0;       size:2; signed:0;
        field:unsigned char common_flags;       offset:2;       size:1; signed:0;
        field:unsigned char common_preempt_count;       offset:3;       size:1; signed:0;
        field:int common_pid;   offset:4;       size:4; signed:1;

        field:int __syscall_nr; offset:8;       size:4; signed:1;
        field:int dfd;  offset:16;      size:8; signed:0;
        field:const char __attribute__((btf_type_tag("user"))) * filename;      offset:24;      size:8; signed:0;
        field:int flags;        offset:32;      size:8; signed:0;
        field:umode_t mode;     offset:40;      size:8; signed:0;

.
Then the trace event filter fails to set the string acceptable flag
(FILTER_PTR_STRING) to the field and rejects setting string filter;

 # echo 'filename.ustring ~ "*ftracetest-dir.wbx24v*"' \
    >> events/syscalls/sys_enter_openat/filter  
 sh: write error: Invalid argument
 # cat error_log
 [  723.743637] event filter parse error: error: Expecting numeric field
   Command: filename.ustring ~ "*ftracetest-dir.wbx24v*"

Since this __attribute__ makes format parsing complicated and not
needed, remove the __attribute__(.*) from the type string.

Actually, you can do this in update_event_fields() that already does
this magic for enums as the field length.

And it doesn't free after allocation because it only does the
allocation for events that will never be freed. For modules, it
registers the allocated string so it will be freed on unload.

-- Steve