On 5/26/2022 6:06 PM, Mark Rutland wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2022 at 05:45:03PM +0800, Xu Kuohai wrote: >> On 5/25/2022 9:38 PM, Mark Rutland wrote: >>> On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 09:16:33AM -0400, Xu Kuohai wrote: >>>> Add ftrace direct support for arm64. >>>> >>>> 1. When there is custom trampoline only, replace the fentry nop to a >>>> jump instruction that jumps directly to the custom trampoline. >>>> >>>> 2. When ftrace trampoline and custom trampoline coexist, jump from >>>> fentry to ftrace trampoline first, then jump to custom trampoline >>>> when ftrace trampoline exits. The current unused register >>>> pt_regs->orig_x0 is used as an intermediary for jumping from ftrace >>>> trampoline to custom trampoline. >>> >>> For those of us not all that familiar with BPF, can you explain *why* you want >>> this? The above explains what the patch implements, but not why that's useful. >>> >>> e.g. is this just to avoid the overhead of the ops list processing in the >>> regular ftrace code, or is the custom trampoline there to allow you to do >>> something special? >> >> IIUC, ftrace direct call was designed to *remove* the unnecessary >> overhead of saving regs completely [1][2]. > > Ok. My plan is to get rid of most of the register saving generally, so I think > that aspect can be solved without direct calls. Looking forward to your new solution. > >> [1] >> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20191022175052.frjzlnjjfwwfov64@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ >> [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20191108212834.594904349@xxxxxxxxxxx/ >> >> This patch itself is just a variant of [3]. >> >> [3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20191108213450.891579507@xxxxxxxxxxx/ >> >>> >>> There is another patch series on the list from some of your colleagues which >>> uses dynamic trampolines to try to avoid that ops list overhead, and it's not >>> clear to me whether these are trying to solve the largely same problem or >>> something different. That other thread is at: >>> >>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20220316100132.244849-1-bobo.shaobowang@xxxxxxxxxx/ >>> >>> ... and I've added the relevant parties to CC here, since there doesn't seem to >>> be any overlap in the CC lists of the two threads. >> >> We're not working to solve the same problem. The trampoline introduced >> in this series helps us to monitor kernel function or another bpf prog >> with bpf, and also helps us to use bpf prog like a normal kernel >> function pointer. > > Ok, but why is it necessary to have a special trampoline? > > Is that *just* to avoid overhead, or do you need to do something special that > the regular trampoline won't do? > Sorry for not explaining the problem. The main bpf prog accepts only a single argument 'ctx' in r1, so to allow kernel code to call bpf prog transparently, we need a trampoline to convert native calling convention into BPF calling convention [1]. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20191114185720.1641606-5-ast@xxxxxxxxxx/ For example, SEC("struct_ops/dctcp_state") void BPF_PROG(dctcp_state, struct sock *sk, __u8 new_state) { // do something } The above bpf prog will be compiled to something like this: dctcp_state: r2 = *(u64 *)(r1 + 8) // new_state r1 = *(u64 *)(r1 + 0) // sk ... It accepts only one argument 'ctx' in r1, and loads the actual arugment 'sk' and 'new_state' from r1 + 0 and r1 + 8, resepectively. So before calling this prog, we need to construct 'ctx' and store its address to r1. >>> >>> In that other thread I've suggested a general approach we could follow at: >>> >>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/YmGF%2FOpIhAF8YeVq@lakrids/ >>> >> >> Is it possible for a kernel function to take a long jump to common >> trampoline when we get a huge kernel image? > > It is possible, but only where the kernel Image itself is massive and the .text > section exceeeds 128MiB, at which point other things break anyway. Practically > speaking, this doesn't happen for production kernels, or reasonable test > kernels. > So even for normal kernel functions, we need some way to construct and destruct long jumps atomically and safely. > I've been meaning to add some logic to detect this at boot time and idsable > ftrace (or at build time), since live patching would also be broken in that > case. >>>> As noted in that thread, I have a few concerns which equally apply here: >>> >>> * Due to the limited range of BL instructions, it's not always possible to >>> patch an ftrace call-site to branch to an arbitrary trampoline. The way this >>> works for ftrace today relies upon knowingthe set of trampolines at >>> compile-time, and allocating module PLTs for those, and that approach cannot >>> work reliably for dynanically allocated trampolines. >> >> Currently patch 5 returns -ENOTSUPP when long jump is detected, so no >> bpf trampoline is constructed for out of range patch-site: >> >> if (is_long_jump(orig_call, image)) >> return -ENOTSUPP; > > Sure, my point is that in practice that means that (from the user's PoV) this > may randomly fail to work, and I'd like something that we can ensure works > consistently. > OK, should I suspend this work until you finish refactoring ftrace? >>> I'd strongly prefer to avoid custom tramplines unless they're strictly >>> necessary for functional reasons, so that we can have this work reliably and >>> consistently. >> >> bpf trampoline is needed by bpf itself, not to replace ftrace trampolines. > > As above, can you please let me know *why* specifically it is needed? Why can't > we invoke the BPF code through the usual ops mechanism? > > Is that to avoid overhead, or are there other functional reasons you need a > special trampoline? > >>>> * If this is mostly about avoiding the ops list processing overhead, I >> beleive >>> we can implement some custom ops support more generally in ftrace which would >>> still use a common trampoline but could directly call into those custom ops. >>> I would strongly prefer this over custom trampolines. >>> >>> * I'm looking to minimize the set of regs ftrace saves, and never save a full >>> pt_regs, since today we (incompletely) fill that with bogus values and cannot >>> acquire some state reliably (e.g. PSTATE). I'd like to avoid usage of pt_regs >>> unless necessary, and I don't want to add additional reliance upon that >>> structure. >> >> Even if such a common trampoline is used, bpf trampoline is still >> necessary since we need to construct custom instructions to implement >> bpf functions, for example, to implement kernel function pointer with a >> bpf prog. > > Sorry, but I'm struggling to understand this. What specifically do you need to > do that means this can't use the same calling convention as the regular ops > function pointers? > > Thanks, > Mark. > .