Re: [PATCH RESEND] eventfd: prepare id to userspace via fdinfo

[Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com>]

Thank you for the comment.

On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 12:05:25 -0700, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 18:29:29 +0900 Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>> Finding endpoints of an IPC channel is one of essential task to
>> understand how a user program works. Procfs and netlink socket provide
>> enough hints to find endpoints for IPC channels like pipes, unix
>> sockets, and pseudo terminals. However, there is no simple way to find
>> endpoints for an eventfd file from userland. An inode number doesn't
>> hint. Unlike pipe, all eventfd files share the same inode object.
>> 
>> To provide the way to find endpoints of an eventfd file, this patch
>> adds "eventfd-id" field to /proc/PID/fdinfo of eventfd as identifier.
>> Address for eventfd context is used as id.
>> 
>> A tool like lsof can utilize the information to print endpoints.
>> 
>> ...
>>
>> --- a/fs/eventfd.c
>> +++ b/fs/eventfd.c
>> @@ -297,6 +297,7 @@ static void eventfd_show_fdinfo(struct seq_file *m, struct file *f)
>>  	seq_printf(m, "eventfd-count: %16llx\n",
>>  		   (unsigned long long)ctx->count);
>>  	spin_unlock_irq(&ctx->wqh.lock);
>> +	seq_printf(m, "eventfd-id: %p\n", ctx);
>>  }
>>  #endif
> 
> Is it a good idea to use a bare kernel address for this?  How does this
> interact with printk pointer randomization and hashing?
> 

My understanding is that an address printed with %p for a bare kernel
address is stable after ptr_key in vsprintf.c is filled, and ptr_key
is filled enough early stage. so, for my usecase, resolving IPC endpoints,
printing a bare kernel address with %p may be enough. Am I missing something?

For the same purpose, I submitted a ida based patch a year ago.
(https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10413589/)
I quote it here for getting comments:

This one doesn't use any bare kernel addresses. I implemented new one (%p version)
bacause is is much shorter.

Do you think ida based one is better than %p based one?

Masatake YAMATO