On 3/1/19 5:08 PM, Joel Fernandes (Google) wrote:
Introduce in-kernel headers and other artifacts which are made available
as an archive through proc (/proc/kheaders.tar.xz file). This archive makes
it possible to build kernel modules, run eBPF programs, and other
tracing programs that need to extend the kernel for tracing purposes
without any dependency on the file system having headers and build
artifacts.
On Android and embedded systems, it is common to switch kernels but not
have kernel headers available on the file system. Raw kernel headers
also cannot be copied into the filesystem like they can be on other
distros, due to licensing and other issues. There's no linux-headers
package on Android. Further once a different kernel is booted, any
headers stored on the file system will no longer be useful. By storing
the headers as a compressed archive within the kernel, we can avoid these
issues that have been a hindrance for a long time.
The feature is also buildable as a module just in case the user desires
it not being part of the kernel image. This makes it possible to load
and unload the headers on demand. A tracing program, or a kernel module
builder can load the module, do its operations, and then unload the
module to save kernel memory. The total memory needed is 3.8MB.
The code to read the headers is based on /proc/config.gz code and uses
the same technique to embed the headers.
To build a module, the below steps have been tested on an x86 machine:
modprobe kheaders
rm -rf $HOME/headers
mkdir -p $HOME/headers
tar -xvf /proc/kheaders.tar.xz -C $HOME/headers >/dev/null
cd my-kernel-module
make -C $HOME/headers M=$(pwd) modules
rmmod kheaders
Additional notes:
(1) external modules must be built on the same arch as the host that
built vmlinux. This can be done either in a qemu emulated chroot on the
target, or natively. This is due to host arch dependency of kernel
scripts.
(2)
A limitation of module building with this is, since Module.symvers is
not available in the archive due to a cyclic dependency with building of
the archive into the kernel or module binaries, the modules built using
the archive will not contain symbol versioning (modversion). This is
usually not an issue since the idea of this patch is to build a kernel
module on the fly and load it into the same kernel. An appropriate
warning is already printed by the kernel to alert the user of modules
not having modversions when built using the archive. For building with
modversions, the user can use traditional header packages. For our
tracing usecases, we build modules on the fly with this so it is not a
concern.
(3) I have left IKHD_ST and IKHD_ED markers as is to facilitate
future patches that would extract the headers from a kernel or module
image.
Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) <joel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes since v3:
- Blank tar was being generated because of a one line I
forgot to push. It is updated now.
- Added module.lds since arm64 needs it to build modules.
Tested on x86 with eBPF scripts and exporting an alternative
BCC_KERNEL_SOURCE.
Tested-by: Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@xxxxxxx>
