Re: [PATCH] tracepoint: Add tracepoint_probe_register_may_exist() for BPF tracing

[Andrii Nakryiko]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 3:45 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 7 Jul 2021 15:12:28 -0700
> Andrii Nakryiko <andrii.nakryiko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > There doesn't seem to be anything conceptually wrong with attaching
> > the same BPF program twice to the same tracepoint. Is it a hard
> > requirement to have a unique tp+callback combination, or was it done
> > mostly to detect an API misuse? How hard is it to support such use
> > cases?
> >
> > I was surprised to discover this is not supported (though I never had
> > a use for this, had to construct a test to see the warning).
>
> The callback is identified by the function and its data combination. If
> there's two callbacks calling the same function with the same data on
> the same tracepoint, one question is, why? And the second is how do you
> differentiate the two?

For places where multiple BPF programs can be attached (kprobes,
cgroup programs, etc), we don't put a restriction that all programs
have to be unique. It's totally legal to have the same program
attached multiple times. So having this for tracepoints will be a
one-off behavior.

As for why the user might need that, it's up to the user and I don't
want to speculate because it will always sound contrived without a
specific production use case. But people are very creative and we try
not to dictate how and what can be done if it doesn't break any
fundamental assumption and safety.

>
> -- Steve