On 15.12.2016 13:03, Nicholas Piggin wrote: > On Thu, 15 Dec 2016 12:19:02 +0100 > Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On 15.12.2016 03:06, Nicholas Piggin wrote: >>> On Wed, 14 Dec 2016 15:04:36 +0100 >>> Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>>> On 09.12.2016 17:03, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: >>>>> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 01:56:53AM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote: >>>>>> On Fri, 9 Dec 2016 15:36:04 +0100 >>>>>> Stanislav Kozina <skozina@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> The question is how to provide a similar guarantee if a different way? >>>>>>>>>> As a tool to aid distro reviewers, modversions has some value, but the >>>>>>>>>> debug info parsing tools that have been mentioned in this thread seem >>>>>>>>>> superior (not that I've tested them). >>>>>>>>> On the other hand the big advantage of modversions is that it also >>>>>>>>> verifies the checksum during runtime (module loading). In other words, I >>>>>>>>> believe that any other solution should still generate some form of >>>>>>>>> checksum/watermark which can be easily checked for compatibility on >>>>>>>>> module load. >>>>>>>>> It should not be hard to add to the DWARF based tools though. We'd just >>>>>>>>> parse DWARF data instead of the C code. >>>>>>>> A runtime check is still done, with per-module vermagic which distros >>>>>>>> can change when they bump the ABI version. Is it really necessary to >>>>>>>> have more than that (i.e., per-symbol versioning)? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> From my point of view, it is. We need to allow changing ABI for some >>>>>>> modules while maintaining it for others. >>>>>>> In fact I think that there should be version not only for every exported >>>>>>> symbol (in the EXPORT_SYMBOL() sense), but also for every public type >>>>>>> (in the sense of eg. structure defined in the public header file). >>>>>> >>>>>> Well the distro can just append _v2, _v3 to the name of the function >>>>>> or type if it has to break compat for some reason. Would that be enough? >>>>> >>>>> There are other ways that distros can work around when upstream "breaks" >>>>> the ABI, sometimes they can rename functions, and others they can >>>>> "preload" structures with padding in anticipation for when/if fields get >>>>> added to them. But that's all up to the distros, no need for us to >>>>> worry about that at all :) >>>> >>>> The _v2 and _v3 functions are probably the ones that also get used by >>>> future backports in the distro kernel itself and are probably the reason >>>> for the ABI change in the first place. Thus going down this route will >>>> basically require distros to touch every future backport patch and will >>>> in general generate a big mess internally. >>> >>> What kind of big mess? You have to check the logic of each backport even >>> if it does apply cleanly, so the added overhead of the name change should >>> be relatively tiny, no? >> >> Basically single patches are backported in huge series. Reviewing each >> single patch also definitely makes sense, a review of the series as a >> whole is much more worthwhile because it focuses more on logic. >> >> The patches themselves are checked by individual robots or humans >> against merge conflict introduced mistakes which ring alarm bells for >> people to look more closely during review. >> >> Merge conflicts introduced mistakes definitely can happen because >> developers/backporters lose the focus from the actual logic but deal >> with shifting lines around or just fixing up postfixes to function names. >> >> We still try to align the kernel as much as possible with upstream, >> because most developers can't really hold the differences between >> upstream and the internal functions in their heads (is this function RMW >> safe in this version but not that kernel version...). > > I agree with all this, but in the case of a function rename, you can > automate it all with scripts if that's what you want. > > When you have your list of exported symbols with non-zero version number, > then you can script that __abivXXX into the changeset applying process, > or alternatively apply the rename after your patches are applied, or > use the c preprocessor to define names to something else. Yes, probably one could come up with coccinelle patches to do this, preprocessing/string matching could have false positives. But as I wrote above, we need one stable ABI and not multiple for our particular kernels, so it seems like a lot of overhead to rename particular functions internally all the time to make them inaccessible for external modules. >> Anyway, I don't think we will at any time have multiple versions of a >> function exported to 3rd party kernel modules. The headaches are just >> too big. Basically we would have to version structs and not functions >> (this is our bigger problem), thus exporting new versions of functions >> don't really help at all. Having multiple versions of structs really >> scares me. ;) >> >> We already pad structs to allow for additional struct members to be >> added, which helps a lot. >> >> If versioning of function symbols would be an issue we probably would >> have switched to ELF function versioning (like glibc does it) long time ago. >> >>>> I think it is important to keep versioning information outside of the >>>> source code. Some kind of modversions will still be required, but >>>> distros should be able to decide if they put in some kind of checksum or >>>> a string, what suites them most. >>> >>> The module crc symbols are just an integer that requires a match, so it >>> could easily be populated by a list that the distro keeps, rather than >>> by genksyms. Most of the complexity is on the build side, so that would >>> still be an improvement for the kernel. So we *could* do this if the >>> distros need it. >> >> Like Don also already said, genksyms already did a pretty good job so >> far. We are right now working with Dodji to come up with a way to >> replace genksyms, in case people really want to have very specific >> control about what causes the symbol version to be changed. > > Yeah it's great work, so is Stanislav's checker. I wouldn't mind having > a kernel-centric checker tool merged in the kernel if it is small, > maintained, and does a sufficient job for distros. Yes, I think this needs more experimentation and thought right now before we can make a decision. >> Also I wonder what Ben's opinion on this is.. As I understood that he >> wants to maintain a super-long-term stable kernel with kabi guarantees. >> >> Note, what we want is to weaken the check for kabi, by excluding parts >> of the struct from genksyms with libabigail. For Red Hat genksyms is too >> strict in the checks. > > Sure, that makes sense. > > So if I understand where we are, moving the ABI compatibility checking > to one of these tools looks possible. What to do when we have an ABI change > is not settled, but feeding version numbers explicitly into modversions > is an option that would be close to what distros do today. Agreed! Thanks also, Hannes -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-arch" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
