Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] arm64: Implement reliable stack trace

[Mark Rutland]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 12:14:31PM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
> Mark B's reply dropped this, but the next paragraph covered that:
> 
> | I was planning to send a mail once I've finished writing a test, but
> | IIUC there are some windows where ftrace/kretprobes
> | detection/repainting may not work, e.g. if preempted after
> | ftrace_return_to_handler() decrements curr_ret_stack, but before the
> | arch trampoline asm restores the original return addr. So we might
> | need something like an in_return_trampoline() to detect and report
> | that reliably.
> 
> ... so e.g. for a callchain A->B->C, where C is instrumented there are
> windows where B might be missing from the trace, but the trace is
> reported as reliable.

I'd missed a couple of details, and I think I see how each existing
architecture prevents this case now.

Josh, just to confirm the x86 case, am I right in thinking that the ORC
unwinder will refuse to unwind from the return_to_handler and
kretprobe_trampoline asm? IIRC objtool shouldn't build unwind info for
those as return_to_handler is marked with SYM_CODE_{START,END}() and
kretprobe_trampoline is marked with STACK_FRAME_NON_STANDARD().

Both powerpc and s390 refuse to reliably unwind through exceptions, so
they can rely on function call boundaries to keep the callchain in a
sane state.

Thanks,
Mark.