Re: [PATCH] riscv: kprobe: Optimize kprobe with accurate atomicity

[Mark Rutland]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 09:48:29AM +0800, Guo Ren wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 11:49 PM Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Bjorn,
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 04:28:15PM +0100, Björn Töpel wrote:
> > > Guo Ren <guoren@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > >
> > > >> In the serie of RISCV OPTPROBES [1], it patches a long-jump instructions pair
> > > >> AUIPC/JALR in kernel text, so in order to ensure other CPUs does not execute
> > > >> in the instructions that will be modified, it is still need to stop other CPUs
> > > >> via patch_text API, or you have any better solution to achieve the purpose?
> > > >  - The stop_machine is an expensive way all architectures should
> > > > avoid, and you could keep that in your OPTPROBES implementation files
> > > > with static functions.
> > > >  - The stop_machine couldn't work with PREEMPTION, so your
> > > > implementation needs to work with !PREEMPTION.
> > >
> > > ...and stop_machine() with !PREEMPTION is broken as well, when you're
> > > replacing multiple instructions (see Mark's post at [1]). The
> > > stop_machine() dance might work when you're replacing *one* instruction,
> > > not multiple as in the RISC-V case. I'll expand on this in a comment in
> > > the OPTPROBES v6 series.
> >
> > Just to clarify, my comments in [1] were assuming that stop_machine() was not
> > used, in which case there is a problem with or without PREEMPTION.
> >
> > I believe that when using stop_machine(), the !PREEMPTION case is fine, since
> > stop_machine() schedules work rather than running work in IRQ context on the
> > back of an IPI, so no CPUs should be mid-sequnce during the patching, and it's
> > not possible for there to be threads which are preempted mid-sequence.
> >
> > That all said, IIUC optprobes is going to disappear once fprobe is ready
> > everywhere, so that might be moot.
> The optprobes could be in the middle of a function, but fprobe must be
> the entry of a function, right?
> 
> Does your fprobe here mean: ?
> 
> The Linux kernel configuration item CONFIG_FPROBE:
> 
> prompt: Kernel Function Probe (fprobe)
> type: bool
> depends on: ( CONFIG_FUNCTION_TRACER ) && (
> CONFIG_DYNAMIC_FTRACE_WITH_REGS ) && ( CONFIG_HAVE_RETHOOK )
> defined in kernel/trace/Kconfig

Yes.

Masami, Steve, and I had a chat at the tracing summit late last year (which
unfortunately, was not recorded), and what we'd like to do is get each
architecture to have FPROBE (and FTRACE_WITH_ARGS), at which point OPTPROBE
and KRETPROBE become redundant and could be removed.

i.e. we'd keep KPROBES as a "you can trace any instruction" feature, but in the
few cases where OPTPROBES can make things fater by using FTRACE, you should
just use that directly via FPROBE.

Thanks,
Mark.