Date:   Fri, 15 May 2020 11:59:51 -0700
From:   Yonghong Song <yhs@...com>
To:     Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@...il.com>,
        Alan Maguire <alan.maguire@...cle.com>
CC:     <ast@...nel.org>, <daniel@...earbox.net>, <bpf@...r.kernel.org>,
        <joe@...ches.com>, <linux@...musvillemoes.dk>,
        <arnaldo.melo@...il.com>, <kafai@...com>, <songliubraving@...com>,
        <andriin@...com>, <john.fastabend@...il.com>,
        <kpsingh@...omium.org>, <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 bpf-next 0/7] bpf, printk: add BTF-based type printing



On 5/13/20 3:24 PM, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 06:56:38AM +0100, Alan Maguire wrote:
>> The printk family of functions support printing specific pointer types
>> using %p format specifiers (MAC addresses, IP addresses, etc).  For
>> full details see Documentation/core-api/printk-formats.rst.
>>
>> This patchset proposes introducing a "print typed pointer" format
>> specifier "%pT"; the argument associated with the specifier is of
>> form "struct btf_ptr *" which consists of a .ptr value and a .type
>> value specifying a stringified type (e.g. "struct sk_buff") or
>> an .id value specifying a BPF Type Format (BTF) id identifying
>> the appropriate type it points to.
>>
>> There is already support in kernel/bpf/btf.c for "show" functionality;
>> the changes here generalize that support from seq-file specific
>> verifier display to the more generic case and add another specific
>> use case; snprintf()-style rendering of type information to a
>> provided buffer.  This support is then used to support printk
>> rendering of types, but the intent is to provide a function
>> that might be useful in other in-kernel scenarios; for example:
>>
>> - ftrace could possibly utilize the function to support typed
>>    display of function arguments by cross-referencing BTF function
>>    information to derive the types of arguments
>> - oops/panic messaging could extend the information displayed to
>>    dig into data structures associated with failing functions
>>
>> The above potential use cases hint at a potential reply to
>> a reasonable objection that such typed display should be
>> solved by tracing programs, where the in kernel tracing records
>> data and the userspace program prints it out.  While this
>> is certainly the recommended approach for most cases, I
>> believe having an in-kernel mechanism would be valuable
>> also.
>>
>> The function the printk() family of functions rely on
>> could potentially be used directly for other use cases
>> like ftrace where we might have the BTF ids of the
>> pointers we wish to display; its signature is as follows:
>>
>> int btf_type_snprintf_show(const struct btf *btf, u32 type_id, void *obj,
>>                             char *buf, int len, u64 flags);
>>
>> So if ftrace say had the BTF ids of the types of arguments,
>> we see that the above would allow us to convert the
>> pointer data into displayable form.
>>
>> To give a flavour for what the printed-out data looks like,
>> here we use pr_info() to display a struct sk_buff *.
>>
>>    struct sk_buff *skb = alloc_skb(64, GFP_KERNEL);
>>
>>    pr_info("%pT", BTF_PTR_TYPE(skb, "struct sk_buff"));
>>
>> ...gives us:
>>
>> (struct sk_buff){
>>   .transport_header = (__u16)65535,
>>   .mac_header = (__u16)65535,
>>   .end = (sk_buff_data_t)192,
>>   .head = (unsigned char *)000000007524fd8b,
>>   .data = (unsigned char *)000000007524fd8b,
> 
> could you add "0x" prefix here to make it even more C like
> and unambiguous ?
> 
>>   .truesize = (unsigned int)768,
>>   .users = (refcount_t){
>>    .refs = (atomic_t){
>>     .counter = (int)1,
>>    },
>>   },
>> }
>>
>> For bpf_trace_printk() a "struct __btf_ptr *" is used as
>> argument; see tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/netif_receive_skb.c
>> for example usage.
>>
>> The hope is that this functionality will be useful for debugging,
>> and possibly help facilitate the cases mentioned above in the future.
>>
>> Changes since v1:
>>
>> - changed format to be more drgn-like, rendering indented type info
>>    along with type names by default (Alexei)
>> - zeroed values are omitted (Arnaldo) by default unless the '0'
>>    modifier is specified (Alexei)
>> - added an option to print pointer values without obfuscation.
>>    The reason to do this is the sysctls controlling pointer display
>>    are likely to be irrelevant in many if not most tracing contexts.
>>    Some questions on this in the outstanding questions section below...
>> - reworked printk format specifer so that we no longer rely on format
>>    %pT<type> but instead use a struct * which contains type information
>>    (Rasmus). This simplifies the printk parsing, makes use more dynamic
>>    and also allows specification by BTF id as well as name.
>> - ensured that BTF-specific printk code is bracketed by
>>    #if ENABLED(CONFIG_BTF_PRINTF)
> 
> I don't like this particular bit:
> +config BTF_PRINTF
> +       bool "print type information using BPF type format"
> +       depends on DEBUG_INFO_BTF
> +       default n
> 
> Looks like it's only purpose is to gate printk test.
> In such case please convert it into hidden config that is
> automatically selected when DEBUG_INFO_BTF is set.
> Or just make printk tests to #if IS_ENABLED(DEBUG_INFO_BTF)
> 
>> - removed incorrect patch which tried to fix dereferencing of resolved
>>    BTF info for vmlinux; instead we skip modifiers for the relevant
>>    case (array element type/size determination) (Alexei).
>> - fixed issues with negative snprintf format length (Rasmus)
>> - added test cases for various data structure formats; base types,
>>    typedefs, structs, etc.
>> - tests now iterate through all typedef, enum, struct and unions
>>    defined for vmlinux BTF and render a version of the target dummy
>>    value which is either all zeros or all 0xff values; the idea is this
>>    exercises the "skip if zero" and "print everything" cases.
>> - added support in BPF for using the %pT format specifier in
>>    bpf_trace_printk()
>> - added BPF tests which ensure %pT format specifier use works (Alexei).
>>
>> Outstanding issues
>>
>> - currently %pT is not allowed in BPF programs when lockdown is active
>>    prohibiting BPF_READ; is that sufficient?
> 
> yes. that's enough.
> 
>> - do we want to further restrict the non-obfuscated pointer format
>>    specifier %pTx; for example blocking unprivileged BPF programs from
>>    using it?
> 
> unpriv cannot use bpf_trace_printk() anyway. I'm not sure what is the concern.
> 
>> - likely still need a better answer for vmlinux BTF initialization
>>    than the current approach taken; early boot initialization is one
>>    way to go here.
> 
> btf_parse_vmlinux() can certainly be moved to late_initcall().
> 
>> - may be useful to have a "print integers as hex" format modifier (Joe)
> 
> I'd rather stick to the convention that the type drives the way the value is printed.
> For example:
>    u8 ch = 65;
>    pr_info("%pT", BTF_PTR_TYPE(&ch, "char"));
>    prints 'A'
> while
>    u8 ch = 65;
>    pr_info("%pT", BTF_PTR_TYPE(&ch, "u8"));
>    prints 65
> 
>>
>> Important note: if running test_printf.ko - the version in the bpf-next
>> tree will induce a panic when running the fwnode_pointer() tests due
>> to a kobject issue; applying the patch in
>>
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/4/17/389
> 
> Thanks for the headsup!
> 
> BTF_PTR_ID() is a great idea as well.
> In the llvm 11 we will introduce __builtin__btf_type_id().
> The bpf program will be able to say:
> bpf_printk("%pT", BTF_PTR_ID(skb, __builtin_btf_type_id(skb, 1)));
> That will help avoid run-time search through btf types by string name.
> The compiler will supply btf_id at build time and libbpf will do
> a relocation into vmlinux btf_id prior to loading.

Hi, Just for your information, __builtin_btf_type_id() helper has been
merged in llvm trunk.

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/072cde03aaa13a2c57acf62d79876bf79aa1919f

For the above case, you can do
   bpf_printk("%pT", BTF_PTR_ID(skb, __builtin_btf_type_id(*skb, 1)));

Basically,
   __builtin_btf_type_id(*skb, 1)
is to
    - return the type of "*skb", i.e., struct sk_buff
    - generate a relocation (against vmlinux) for this type id

The libbpf work is needed, not implemented yet, for the relocation
to actually happen.

__builtin_btf_type_id(skb, 1) will return a type for "skb" which
is a pointer type to "struct sk_buff".

> 
> Also I think there should be another flag BTF_SHOW_PROBE_DATA.
> It should probe_kernel_read() all data instead of direct dereferences.
> It could be implemented via single probe_kernel_read of the whole BTF data
> structure before pringing the fields one by one. So it should be simple
> addition to patch 2.
> This flag should be default for printk() from bpf program,
> since the verifier won't be checking that pointer passed into bpf_trace_printk
> is of correct btf type and it's a real pointer.
> Whether this flag should be default for normal printk() is arguable.
> I would make it so. The performance cost of extra copy is small comparing
> with no-crash guarantee it provides. I think it would be a good trade off.
> 
> In the future we can extend the verifier so that:
> bpf_safe_printk("%pT", skb);
> will be recognized that 'skb' is PTR_TO_BTF_ID and corresponding and correct
> btf_id is passed into printk. Mistakes will be caught at program
> verification time.
> 

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