Re: ORC unwinder and 'reliable' flag to printk_stack_address()

[Josh Poimboeuf]

On Fri, Sep 08, 2017 at 01:12:45PM +0200, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2017, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> 
> > > I just got the below stack trace with current Linus' tree with ORC 
> > > unwinder enabled:
> > > 
> > > 	[    8.652765] Call Trace:
> > > 	[    8.652767]  dump_stack+0x7c/0xbf
> > > 	[    8.652769]  print_circular_bug+0x2d3/0x2e0
> > > 	[    8.652771]  check_prev_add+0x666/0x700
> > > 	[    8.652772]  ? print_bfs_bug+0x40/0x40
> > > 	[    8.652775]  lock_commit_crosslock+0x3f1/0x570
> > > 	[    8.652777]  complete+0x24/0x60
> > > 	[    8.652779]  __kthread_parkme+0x42/0x90
> > > 	[    8.652780]  smpboot_thread_fn+0x92/0x210
> > > 	[    8.652782]  kthread+0x145/0x180
> > > 	[    8.652783]  ? sort_range+0x20/0x20
> > > 	[    8.652785]  ? kthread_create_on_node+0x40/0x40
> > > 	[    8.652787]  ret_from_fork+0x2a/0x40
> > > 
> > > Please note the kthread_create_on_node(), sort_range() and print_bfs_bug() 
> > > entries ... I believe they actually shouldn't be there at all. All of them 
> > > are at the last byte belonging to the function. Am I missing something?
> > 
> > The question marks are still supposed to be there.  They show any text
> > addresses found on the stack that weren't otherwise found by the
> > unwinder.  99.9% of the time, they're left over from a previous call
> > chain, and should be ignored.
> 
> It's interesting though that all of them (and even in other instances I've 
> encountered in the meantime) are always at the "last address" of the 
> function address range. That's hardly a conincidence, and also hardly a 
> result of a legitimate stacktrace -- 'call' is rather unlikely to be the 
> last insn in a function.

Ah, I missed that detail.  In this case, these aren't actually bread
crumbs from a previous stack.  They're actually function pointers which
are saved on the current stack.

In my vmlinux, the function which comes after kthread_create_on_node()
is kthread().  Which means kthread_create_on_node+0x40/0x40 is the same
address as kthread+0x0.  So it's the 'kthread' function pointer.
Similarly, sort_range+0x20/0x20 is the same as smpboot_thread_fn+0x0.

So the 'kthread' and 'smpboot_thread_fn' function pointers are getting
saved on the stack in kthread()'s frame.  The oops dump code in
show_trace_log_lvl() sees those text addresses and prints them as bread
crumbs.

So your next question might be, why is it printed as

  kthread_create_on_node+0x40/0x40

instead of

  kthread+0x0/0x18e

?

The reason is, there are some "noreturn" functions which never return,
like panic().  They sometimes have a CALL instruction at the very end.
So if kthread_create_on_node()'s last instruction were a CALL, we'd want
to show *that* function name instead of kthread().

So when printing splats, we always assume that the boundary between the
end of a function and the beginning of a function belongs to the
previous function.  That's what the printk '%pB' specifier does.

The only exception to that is when printing regs->ip.  In that case, the
interrupt could have occurred right at the beginning of a function.  So
we would print 'kthread+0x0'.  Which is what the '%pS' specifier does.

-- 
Josh