Re: [PATCH bpf-next v2 2/2] bpf: Implement formatted output helpers with bstr_printf

[Florent Revest]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 1:46 AM Alexei Starovoitov
<alexei.starovoitov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 10:43 AM Florent Revest <revest@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > +                       if (fmt[i + 1] == 'B') {
> > +                               if (tmp_buf)  {
> > +                                       err = snprintf(tmp_buf,
> > +                                                      (tmp_buf_end - tmp_buf),
> > +                                                      "%pB",
> ...
> > +                       if ((tmp_buf_end - tmp_buf) < sizeof_cur_ip) {
>
> I removed a few redundant () like above

Oh, sorry about that.

> and applied.

Nice! :)

> >                 if (fmt[i] == 'l') {
> > -                       cur_mod = BPF_PRINTF_LONG;
> > +                       sizeof_cur_arg = sizeof(long);
> >                         i++;
> >                 }
> >                 if (fmt[i] == 'l') {
> > -                       cur_mod = BPF_PRINTF_LONG_LONG;
> > +                       sizeof_cur_arg = sizeof(long long);
> >                         i++;
> >                 }
>
> This bit got me thinking.
> I understand that this is how bpf_trace_printk behaved
> and the sprintf continued the tradition, but I think it will
> surprise bpf users.
> The bpf progs are always 64-bit. The sizeof(long) == 8
> inside any bpf program. So printf("%ld") matches that long.

Yes, this also surprised me.

> The clang could even do type checking to make sure the prog
> is passing the right type into printf() if we add
> __attribute__ ((format (printf))) to bpf_helper_defs.h
> But this sprintf() implementation will trim the value to 32-bit
> to satisfy 'fmt' string on 32-bit archs.
> So bpf program behavior would be different on 32 and 64-bit archs.
> I think that would be confusing, since the rest of bpf prog is
> portable. The progs work the same way on all archs
> (except endianess, of course).
> I'm not sure how to fix it though.
> The sprintf cannot just pass 64-bit unconditionally, since
> bstr_printf on 32-bit archs will process %ld incorrectly.
> The verifier could replace %ld with %Ld.
> The fmt string is a read only string for bpf_snprintf,
> but for bpf_trace_printk it's not and messing with it at run-time
> is not good. Copying the fmt string is not great either.
> Messing with internals of bstr_printf is ugly too.

Indeed, none of these solutions are satisfying.

> Maybe we just have to live with this quirk ?

If we were starting from scratch, maybe just banning %ld could have
been an option, but now that bpf_trace_printk has been behaving like
this for a while, I think it might be best to just keep the behavior
as it is.

> Just add a doc to uapi/bpf.h to discourage %ld and be done?

More doc is always good. Something like "Note: %ld behaves differently
depending on the host architecture, it is recommended to avoid it and
use %d or %lld instead" in the helper description of the three
helpers? If you don't have the time to do it today, I can send a patch
tomorrow.