Re: [PATCH v5 01/15] stacktrace/x86: add function for detecting reliable stack traces

From: Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>
To: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Jessica Yu <jeyu@redhat.com>, Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>,
	Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>, Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, live-patching@vger.kernel.org,
	Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>,
	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>,
	x86@kernel.org, linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org,
	linux-s390@vger.kernel.org, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.com>,
	Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>,
	Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@canonical.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
	Kamalesh Babulal <kamalesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 01/15] stacktrace/x86: add function for detecting reliable stack traces
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2017 20:47:17 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1488966437.13674.2.camel@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20170307161230.44rvjm7ed7azgu6x@treble>

On Tue, 2017-03-07 at 10:12 -0600, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 05:50:55PM +1100, Balbir Singh wrote:
> > On Mon, 2017-02-13 at 19:42 -0600, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> > > For live patching and possibly other use cases, a stack trace is only
> > > useful if it can be assured that it's completely reliable.  Add a new
> > > save_stack_trace_tsk_reliable() function to achieve that.
> > > 
> > > Note that if the target task isn't the current task, and the target task
> > > is allowed to run, then it could be writing the stack while the unwinder
> > > is reading it, resulting in possible corruption.  So the caller of
> > > save_stack_trace_tsk_reliable() must ensure that the task is either
> > > 'current' or inactive.
> > > 
> > > save_stack_trace_tsk_reliable() relies on the x86 unwinder's detection
> > > of pt_regs on the stack.  If the pt_regs are not user-mode registers
> > > from a syscall, then they indicate an in-kernel interrupt or exception
> > > (e.g. preemption or a page fault), in which case the stack is considered
> > > unreliable due to the nature of frame pointers.
> > > 
> > > It also relies on the x86 unwinder's detection of other issues, such as:
> > > 
> > > - corrupted stack data
> > > - stack grows the wrong way
> > > - stack walk doesn't reach the bottom
> > > - user didn't provide a large enough entries array
> > > 
> > > Such issues are reported by checking unwind_error() and !unwind_done().
> > > 
> > > Also add CONFIG_HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE so arch-independent code can
> > > determine at build time whether the function is implemented.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
> > > ---
> > 
> > Could you comment on why we need a reliable trace for live-patching? Are
> > we in any way reliant on the stack trace to patch something broken?
> 
> I tried to cover this comprehensively in patch 13/15 in
> Documentation/livepatch/livepatch.txt.  Does that answer your questions?
>

Yes, it answers my questions

Thanks,
Balbir Singh.