Re: [PATCH RFC 0/4] Add support to directly attach BPF program to ftrace

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:30:50 -0400
Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org> wrote:

> I don't see why a new bpf node for a trace event is a bad idea, really.
> tracefs is how we deal with trace events on Android. We do it in production
> systems. This is a natural extension to that and fits with the security model
> well.

What I would like to see is a way to have BPF inject data into the
ftrace ring buffer directly. There's a bpf_trace_printk() that I find a
bit of a hack (especially since it hooks into trace_printk() which is
only for debugging purposes). Have a dedicated bpf ftrace ring
buffer event that can be triggered is what I am looking for. Then comes
the issue of what ring buffer to place it in, as ftrace can have
multiple ring buffer instances. But these instances are defined by the
tracefs instances directory. Having a way to associate a bpf program to
a specific event in a specific tracefs directory could allow for ways to
trigger writing into the correct ftrace buffer.

But looking over the patches, I see what Alexei means that there's no
overlap with ftrace and these patches except for the tracefs directory
itself (which is part of the ftrace infrastructure). And the trace
events are technically part of the ftrace infrastructure too. I see the
tracefs interface being used, but I don't see how the bpf programs
being added affect the ftrace ring buffer or other parts of ftrace. And
I'm guessing that's what is confusing Alexei.

-- Steve