Re: [RFC PATCH v1 12/16] unwind_user/backchain: Introduce back chain user space unwinding
From: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Date: 2025-07-18 05:19:57
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On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 02:20:12PM +0200, Jens Remus wrote:
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+done_backchain: state->topmost = false; return 0;This feels very grafted on, is there not some way to make it more generic, i.e., to just work with CONFIG_HAVE_UNWIND_USER_FP?I agree. It could probably be made to compute the cfa_off and ra.offset or ra.regnum. Let me explore that, provided there would be any acceptance for unwind user backchain at all. Note that Power is using backchain as well, so they may want to build on that as well.quoted
Also, if distros aren't even compiling with -mbackchain, I wonder if we can just not do this altogether :-)My original intent was to use unwind user's for_each_user_frame() to replace the exiting stack tracing logic in arch_stack_walk_user_common() in arch/s390/kernel/stacktrace.c, which currently supports backchain. Given that for_each_user_frame() was made private in the latest unwind user series version hinders me. The use was also low, because the currentl arch_stack_walk_user_common() implementation does not support page faults, so that the attempt to use unwind user sframe would always fail and fallback to unwind user backchain. My hope was that somebody with more Kernel skills could give me a few hints at how it could be made to support deferred unwind. :-)
I believe stack_trace_save_user() is only used by ftrace, and that will no longer be needed once ftrace starts using unwind_user. Maybe Heiko knows if that backchain user stacktrace code has any users? If distros aren't building with -mbackchain, maybe backchain support can be considered obsoleted by sframe, and we can get away with not implementing it. -- Josh