Re: [RFCv1 0/6] Page Detective

[Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>]

On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 11:35:47AM -0800, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 11:30 AM Pasha Tatashin
> <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 1:23 PM Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 10:08:36AM -0500, Pasha Tatashin wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 8:09 PM Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 05:08:42PM -0500, Pasha Tatashin wrote:
> > > > > > Additionally, using crash/drgn is not feasible for us at this time, it
> > > > > > requires keeping external tools on our hosts, also it requires
> > > > > > approval and a security review for each script before deployment in
> > > > > > our fleet.
> > > > >
> > > > > So it's ok to add a totally insecure kernel feature to your fleet
> > > > > instead?  You might want to reconsider that policy decision :)
> > > >
> > > > Hi Greg,
> > > >
> > > > While some risk is inherent, we believe the potential for abuse here
> > > > is limited, especially given the existing  CAP_SYS_ADMIN requirement.
> > > > But, even with root access compromised, this tool presents a smaller
> > > > attack surface than alternatives like crash/drgn. It exposes less
> > > > sensitive information, unlike crash/drgn, which could potentially
> > > > allow reading all of kernel memory.
> > >
> > > The problem here is with using dmesg for output. No security-sensitive
> > > information should go there. Even exposing raw kernel pointers is not
> > > considered safe.
> >
> > I am OK in writing the output to a debugfs file in the next version,
> > the only concern I have is that implies that dump_page() would need to
> > be basically duplicated, as it now outputs everything via printk's.
> 
> Perhaps you can refactor the code in dump_page() to use a seq_buf,
> then have dump_page() printk that seq_buf using seq_buf_do_printk(),
> and have page detective output that seq_buf to the debugfs file?
> 
> We do something very similar with memory_stat_format(). We use the
> same function to generate the memcg stats in a seq_buf, then we use
> that seq_buf to output the stats to memory.stat as well as the OOM
> log.

+1

Thanks!