Userspace Statically Defined Tracepoints[1] are dtrace style markers inside userspace applications. Applications like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Pthread, Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, Node.js, libvirt, QEMU, glib etc have these markers embedded in them. These markers are added by developer at important places in the code. Each marker source expands to a single nop instruction in the compiled code but there may be additional overhead for computing the marker arguments which expands to couple of instructions. In case the overhead is more, execution of it can be omitted by runtime if() condition when no one is tracing on the marker: if (reference_counter > 0) { Execute marker instructions; } Default value of reference counter is 0. Tracer has to increment the reference counter before tracing on a marker and decrement it when done with the tracing. Currently, perf tool has limited supports for SDT markers. I.e. it can not trace markers surrounded by reference counter. Also, it's not easy to add reference counter logic in userspace tool like perf, so basic idea for this patchset is to add reference counter logic in the a uprobe infrastructure. Ex,[2] # cat tick.c ... for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) { DTRACE_PROBE1(tick, loop1, i); if (TICK_LOOP2_ENABLED()) { DTRACE_PROBE1(tick, loop2, i); } printf("hi: %d\n", i); sleep(1); } ... Here tick:loop1 is marker without reference counter where as tick:loop2 is surrounded by reference counter condition. # perf buildid-cache --add /tmp/tick # perf probe sdt_tick:loop1 # perf probe sdt_tick:loop2 # perf stat -e sdt_tick:loop1,sdt_tick:loop2 -- /tmp/tick hi: 0 hi: 1 hi: 2 ^C Performance counter stats for '/tmp/tick': 3 sdt_tick:loop1 0 sdt_tick:loop2 2.747086086 seconds time elapsed Perf failed to record data for tick:loop2. Same experiment with this patch series: # ./perf buildid-cache --add /tmp/tick # ./perf probe sdt_tick:loop2 # ./perf stat -e sdt_tick:loop2 /tmp/tick hi: 0 hi: 1 hi: 2 ^C Performance counter stats for '/tmp/tick': 3 sdt_tick:loop2 2.561851452 seconds time elapsed v6 changes: - Do not export struct uprobe outside of uprobe.c. Instead, use container_of(arch_uprobe) to regain uprobe in uprobe_write_opcode(). - Allow 0 as a special value for reference counter _offset_. I.e. two uprobes, one having ref_ctr_offset=0 and the other having non-zero ref_ctr_offset can coexists. - If vma holding reference counter is not present while patching an instruction, we add that uprobe in delayed_uprobe_list. When appropriate mapping is created, we increment the reference counter and remove uprobe from delayed_uprobe_list. While doing all this, v5 was searching for all such uprobes in uprobe_tree which is not require. Also, uprobes are stored in rbtree with inode+offset as the key and v5 was searching uprobe based on inode+ref_ctr_offset which is wrong too. Fix this by directly looing on delayed_uprobe_list. - Consider VM_SHARED vma as invalid for reference counter. Return false from valid_ref_ctr_vma() if vma->vm_flags has VM_SHARED set. - No need to use FOLL_FORCE in get_user_pages_remote() while getting a page to update reference counter. Remove it. - Do not mention usage of reference counter in Documentation/. v5 can be found at: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/6/28/51 Ravi Bangoria (6): Uprobes: Simplify uprobe_register() body Uprobe: Additional argument arch_uprobe to uprobe_write_opcode() Uprobes: Support SDT markers having reference count (semaphore) trace_uprobe/sdt: Prevent multiple reference counter for same uprobe Uprobes/sdt: Prevent multiple reference counter for same uprobe perf probe: Support SDT markers having reference counter (semaphore) arch/arm/probes/uprobes/core.c | 2 +- arch/mips/kernel/uprobes.c | 2 +- include/linux/uprobes.h | 7 +- kernel/events/uprobes.c | 358 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----- kernel/trace/trace.c | 2 +- kernel/trace/trace_uprobe.c | 78 ++++++++- tools/perf/util/probe-event.c | 39 ++++- tools/perf/util/probe-event.h | 1 + tools/perf/util/probe-file.c | 34 +++- tools/perf/util/probe-file.h | 1 + tools/perf/util/symbol-elf.c | 46 ++++-- tools/perf/util/symbol.h | 7 + 12 files changed, 503 insertions(+), 74 deletions(-) -- 2.14.4