On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 11:31 PM Andrei Vagin <avagin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 04, 2024 at 05:24:48PM -0700, Andrii Nakryiko wrote: > > /proc/<pid>/maps file is extremely useful in practice for various tasks > > involving figuring out process memory layout, what files are backing any > > given memory range, etc. One important class of applications that > > absolutely rely on this are profilers/stack symbolizers (perf tool being one > > of them). Patterns of use differ, but they generally would fall into two > > categories. > > > > In on-demand pattern, a profiler/symbolizer would normally capture stack > > trace containing absolute memory addresses of some functions, and would > > then use /proc/<pid>/maps file to find corresponding backing ELF files > > (normally, only executable VMAs are of interest), file offsets within > > them, and then continue from there to get yet more information (ELF > > symbols, DWARF information) to get human-readable symbolic information. > > This pattern is used by Meta's fleet-wide profiler, as one example. > > > > In preprocessing pattern, application doesn't know the set of addresses > > of interest, so it has to fetch all relevant VMAs (again, probably only > > executable ones), store or cache them, then proceed with profiling and > > stack trace capture. Once done, it would do symbolization based on > > stored VMA information. This can happen at much later point in time. > > This patterns is used by perf tool, as an example. > > > > In either case, there are both performance and correctness requirement > > involved. This address to VMA information translation has to be done as > > efficiently as possible, but also not miss any VMA (especially in the > > case of loading/unloading shared libraries). In practice, correctness > > can't be guaranteed (due to process dying before VMA data can be > > captured, or shared library being unloaded, etc), but any effort to > > maximize the chance of finding the VMA is appreciated. > > > > Unfortunately, for all the /proc/<pid>/maps file universality and > > usefulness, it doesn't fit the above use cases 100%. > > > > First, it's main purpose is to emit all VMAs sequentially, but in > > practice captured addresses would fall only into a smaller subset of all > > process' VMAs, mainly containing executable text. Yet, library would > > need to parse most or all of the contents to find needed VMAs, as there > > is no way to skip VMAs that are of no use. Efficient library can do the > > linear pass and it is still relatively efficient, but it's definitely an > > overhead that can be avoided, if there was a way to do more targeted > > querying of the relevant VMA information. > > > > Second, it's a text based interface, which makes its programmatic use from > > applications and libraries more cumbersome and inefficient due to the > > need to handle text parsing to get necessary pieces of information. The > > overhead is actually payed both by kernel, formatting originally binary > > VMA data into text, and then by user space application, parsing it back > > into binary data for further use. > > I was trying to solve all these issues in a more generic way: > https://lwn.net/Articles/683371/ > Can you please provide a tl;dr summary of that effort? > We definitely interested in this new interface to use it in CRIU. > > <snip> > > > + > > + if (karg.vma_name_size) { > > + size_t name_buf_sz = min_t(size_t, PATH_MAX, karg.vma_name_size); > > + const struct path *path; > > + const char *name_fmt; > > + size_t name_sz = 0; > > + > > + get_vma_name(vma, &path, &name, &name_fmt); > > + > > + if (path || name_fmt || name) { > > + name_buf = kmalloc(name_buf_sz, GFP_KERNEL); > > + if (!name_buf) { > > + err = -ENOMEM; > > + goto out; > > + } > > + } > > + if (path) { > > + name = d_path(path, name_buf, name_buf_sz); > > + if (IS_ERR(name)) { > > + err = PTR_ERR(name); > > + goto out; > > It always fails if a file path name is longer than PATH_MAX. > > Can we add a flag to indicate whether file names are needed to be It's already supported. Getting a VMA name is optional. See a big comment next to the vma_name_size field in the UAPI header. If vma_name_size is set to zero, VMA name is not retrieved at all, avoiding the overhead and this issue with PATH_MAX. > resolved? In criu, we use special names like "vvar", "vdso", but we dump > files via /proc/pid/map_files. > > > + } > > + name_sz = name_buf + name_buf_sz - name; > > + } else if (name || name_fmt) { > > + name_sz = 1 + snprintf(name_buf, name_buf_sz, name_fmt ?: "%s", name); > > + name = name_buf; > > + } > > + if (name_sz > name_buf_sz) { > > + err = -ENAMETOOLONG; > > + goto out; > > + } > > + karg.vma_name_size = name_sz; > > + } > > Thanks, > Andrei