linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] perf: Userspace software event and ioctl

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Date:	Thu, 25 Sep 2014 18:20:49 +0100
From:	Pawel Moll <pawel.moll@....com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
Cc:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...nel.org>,
	Richard Cochran <richardcochran@...il.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	John Stultz <john.stultz@...aro.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-api@...r.kernel.org" <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] perf: Userspace software event and ioctl

On Wed, 2014-09-24 at 08:49 +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Pawel Moll <pawel.moll@....com> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2014-09-18 at 15:34 +0100, Pawel Moll wrote:
> > > This patch adds a PERF_COUNT_SW_USERSPACE_EVENT type,
> > > which can be generated by user with PERF_EVENT_IOC_ENTRY
> > > ioctl command, which injects an event of said type into
> > > the perf buffer.
> > 
> > It occurred to me last night that currently perf doesn't handle "write"
> > syscall at all, while this seems like the most natural way of
> > "injecting" userspace events into perf buffer.
> > 
> > An ioctl would still be needed to set a type of the following events,
> > something like:
> > 
> > 	ioctl(SET_TYPE, 0x42);
> > 	write(perf_fd, binaryblob, size);
> > 	ioctl(SET_TYPE, 0);
> > 	dprintf(perf_fd, "String");
> > 
> > which is fine for use cases when the type doesn't change often, 
> > but would double the amount of syscalls when every single event 
> > is of a different type. Perhaps there still should be a 
> > "generating ioctl" taking both type and data/size in one go?
> 
> Absolutely, there should be a single syscall.

Yeah, it's my gut feeling as well. I just wonder if we still want to
keep write() handler for operations on perf fds? This seems natural -
takes data buffer and its size. The only issue is the type.

> I'd even argue it should be a new prctl(): that way we could both 
> generate user events for specific perf fds, but also into any 
> currently active context (that allows just generation/injection 
> of user events). In the latter case we might have no fd to work 
> off from.

When Arnaldo suggested that the "user events" could be used by perf
trace, it was exactly my first thought. I just didn't have answer how to
present it to the user (an extra syscall didn't seem like a good idea),
but prctl seems interesting, something like this?

	prctl(PR_TRACE_UEVENT, type, size, data, 0);

How would we select tasks that can write to a given buffer? Maybe an
ioctl() on a perf fd? Something like this?

	ioctl(perf_fd, PERF_EVENT_IOC_ENABLE_UEVENT, pid);
	ioctl(perf_fd, PERF_EVENT_IOC_DISABLE_UEVENT, pid);

It could set/clear a flag in pid's task_struct (but probably not in the
"normal" flags, as they are only supposed to be set by owner and in
ptrace/fork case) and a pointer to the task in perf_event(_context).

Or maybe some variation on ptrace would be more in place? This would
also solve issue of permission checking (if the profiling tool can
ptrace the process, it can also enable/disable its uevent generation
capability).

Paweł

Or maybe it should go through ptrace?

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