Re: [PATCH RFC v4 net-next 17/26] tracing: allow eBPF programs to be attached to events

[Alexei Starovoitov]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:02 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> correct. eBPF program would be using 8-byte read on 64-bit kernel
>> and 4-byte read on 32-bit kernel. Same with access to ptrace fields
>> and pretty much all other fields in the kernel. The program will be
>> different on different kernels.
>> Say, this bpf_context struct doesn't exist at all. The programs would
>> still need to be different to walk in-kernel data structures...
>
> Hmm.  I guess this isn't so bad.
>
> What's the actual difficulty with using u64?  ISTM that, if the clang
> front-end can't deal with u64, there's a bigger problem.  Or is it
> something else I don't understand.

clang/llvm has no problem with u64 :)
This bpf_context struct for tracing is trying to answer the question:
 'what's the most convenient way to access tracepoint arguments
from a script'.
When kernel code has something like:
 trace_kfree_skb(skb, net_tx_action);
the script needs to be able to access this 'skb' and 'net_tx_action'
values through _single_ data structure.
In this proposal they are ctx->arg1 and ctx->arg2.
I've considered having different bpf_context's for every event, but
the complexity explodes. I need to hack all event definitions and so on.
imo it's better to move complexity to userspace, so program author
or high level language abstracts these details.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/