linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/3] ftrace: add function tracing to single thread

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Message-Id: <1227660839.12109.52.camel@nimitz>
Date:	Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:53:59 -0800
From:	Dave Hansen <dave@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	containers@...ts.osdl.org, fweisbec@...il.com,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, srostedt@...hat.com,
	Eric Biederman <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
	Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@...ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] ftrace: add function tracing to single thread

On Tue, 2008-11-25 at 19:11 -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > > > Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > This patch adds the ability to function trace a single thread.
> > > > > The file:
> > > > > 
> > > > >   /debugfs/tracing/set_ftrace_pid
> > > > > 
> > > > > contains the pid to trace.
> > > > 
> > > > What happens if the same pid exists in two or more pid namespaces?
> > > 
> > > I think we had this discussion before.
> > 
> > Oh.  What did we end up concluding?
> > 
> > > It tests current->pid, would that 
> > > be different among the name spaces?
> > 
> > I think those are non-unique.  containers@...ts.osdl.org would have
> > better ideas..
> 
> Added list in CC.
> 
> I think the end result was, if this file can only be changed by root, then 
> we do not need to worry about namespaces. This file is a privileged file 
> that can only be modified by root.
> 
> If someday we decide to let non admin users touch this file, then we would
> need to care about this.  This file may actually be modified in the future 
> by users, so this may become an issue.

This really has very little to do with root vs non-root users.  In fact,
we're working towards having cases where we have many "root" users, even
those inside namespaces.  It is also quite possible for a normal root
user to fork into a new pid namespace.  In that case, root simply won't
be able to use this feature because something like:

	echo $$ /debugfs/tracing/set_ftrace_pid

just won't work.  Let's look at a bit of the code.

+static void ftrace_pid_func(unsigned long ip, unsigned long parent_ip)
+{
+       if (current->pid != ftrace_pid_trace)
+               return;
+
+       ftrace_pid_function(ip, parent_ip);
+}

One thing this doesn't deal with is pid wraparound.  Does that matter?

If you want to fix this a bit, instead of saving off the pid_t in
ftrace_pid_trace, you should save a 'struct pid'.  You can get the
'struct pid' for a particular task by doing a find_get_pid(pid_t).  You
can then compare that pid_t to current by doing a
pid_task(struct_pid_that_i_saved, PIDTYPE_PID).  That will also protect
against pid wraparound.

The find_get_pid() is handy because it will do the pid_t lookup in the
context of the current task's pid namespace, which is what you want, I
think.

-- Dave

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