Re: [RFD] Kprobes/Kretprobes perf support

[Masami Hiramatsu]

Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> Ftrace events are supported by perfcounter currently but Kprobes
> dynamic ftrace events are of a different nature: we must create them
> before any toggling.
>
> So a large part is already done through the ftrace events and the fact
> that you create one dynamically for each kprobes (we'll just need
> a little callback for perf sample submission but that's a small
> point).
>
> The largest work that remains is to port the current powerful interface
> to create these k{ret}probes (with requested  arguments, etc...) through
> ftrace but using perf open syscall.
>
> And I imagine it won't be trivial.
>
> Ingo, Peter do you have an idea on how we could do that?
> We should be able to choose between a kprobe and kretprobe (these can
> be two separate counters). And also one must be able to request the dump
> of random desired parameters (or return values in case of kretprobe)
> or registers...
>
> May be we should use the perf attr by passing a __user address to a buffer
> that contains all these options?
> Once we get that to the kernel, that can be passed to ftrace-kprobe that
> can parse it, create the desired trace event and rely on perf to create
> a counter for it.
>
> I guess that won't imply so much adds to Masami's patchset. Most of
> the work is on the perf tools (parsing the user request).
>
> ./perf kprobes -e (func|addr):(c|r):(a1,a2,a3,... | rax,rbx,rcx,...)
>                                ^  ^
>                             c = call = kprobe
>                             r = return = kretprobe

If it is possible that libdwarf can be linked to the perf tool, I think
it might be better to support 'C source line/local variable' style too,
because basic dwarf decoding logic has already been done in c2kpe which
I posted yesterday :-).

Thank you,

--
Masami Hiramatsu

Software Engineer
Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc.
Software Solutions Division

e-mail: mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx

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