sahiro Yamada [off-list ref], Jarkko Sakkinen [off-list ref], Sami Tolvanen [off-list ref], "Naveen N. Rao" [off-list ref], Marco Elver [off-list ref], Kees Cook [off-list ref], Steven Rostedt [off-list ref], Nathan Chancellor [off-list ref], "Russell King \(Oracle\)" [off-list ref], Mark Brown [off-list ref], Borislav Petkov [off-list ref], Alexander Egorenkov [off-list ref], Thomas Bogendoerfer [off-list ref], linux-parisc@vger.kernel.org, Nathaniel McCallum [off-list ref], Dmitry Torokhov [off-list ref], "David S. Miller" [off-list ref], "Kirill A. Shutemov" [off-list ref], Tobias Huschle [off-list ref], "Peter Zijlstra \(Intel\)" [off-list ref], "H. Peter Anvin" [off-list ref], sparclinux@vger.kernel.org, Tiezhu Yang [off-list ref], Miroslav Benes [off-list ref], Chen Zhongjin <chenzhongjin@huawei.
 com>, linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org, X86 ML [off-list ref], Russell King [off-list ref], Ingo Molnar [off-list ref], Aaron Tomlin [off-list ref], Albert Ou [off-list ref], Heiko Carstens [off-list ref], Liao Chang [off-list ref], Paul Walmsley [off-list ref], Josh Poimboeuf [off-list ref], Thomas Richter [off-list ref], linux-mips@vger.kernel.org, Changbin Du [off-list ref], Palmer Dabbelt [off-list ref], linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org, linux-modules@vger.kernel.org
Errors-To: linuxppc-dev-bounces+linuxppc-dev=archiver.kernel.org@lists.ozlabs.org
Sender: "Linuxppc-dev" [off-list ref]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2022 at 9:28 AM Ard Biesheuvel [off-list ref] wrote:

Hello Jarkko,

On Wed, 8 Jun 2022 at 02:02, Jarkko Sakkinen [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Tracing with kprobes while running a monolithic kernel is currently
impossible because CONFIG_KPROBES is dependent of CONFIG_MODULES.  This
dependency is a result of kprobes code using the module allocator for the
trampoline code.

Detaching kprobes from modules helps to squeeze down the user space,
e.g. when developing new core kernel features, while still having all
the nice tracing capabilities.

For kernel/ and arch/*, move module_alloc() and module_memfree() to
module_alloc.c, and compile as part of vmlinux when either CONFIG_MODULES
or CONFIG_KPROBES is enabled.  In addition, flag kernel module specific
code with CONFIG_MODULES.

As the result, kprobes can be used with a monolithic kernel.

I think I may have mentioned this the previous time as well, but I
don't think this is the right approach.

Kprobes uses alloc_insn_page() to allocate executable memory, but the
requirements for this memory are radically different compared to
loadable modules, which need to be within an arch-specific distance of
the core kernel, need KASAN backing etc etc.

I think the distance of core kernel requirement is the same for kprobe
alloc_insn_page and modules, no?

Thanks,
Song

This is why arm64, for instance, does not implement alloc_insn_page()
in terms of module_alloc() [and likely does not belong in this patch
for that reason]

Is there any reason kprobes cannot simply use vmalloc()?