Re: [PATCH bpf-next v5 0/3] add support for writable bare tracepoint

[Hou Tao <houtao1@huawei.com>]

Hi Steven,

On 10/4/2021 10:46 PM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Mon,  4 Oct 2021 17:48:54 +0800
> Hou Tao <hotforest@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The main idea comes from patchset "writable contexts for bpf raw
>> tracepoints" [1], but it only supports normal tracepoint with
>> associated trace event under tracefs. Now we have one use case
>> in which we add bare tracepoint in VFS layer, and update
>> file::f_mode for specific files. The reason using bare tracepoint
>> is that it doesn't form a ABI and we can change it freely. So
>> add support for it in BPF.
> Are the VFS maintainers against adding a trace event with just a pointer as
> an interface?
Not tried yet, but considering that VFS maintainer refused to have tracepoint in
VFS layer, I'm not sure it is worth trying.
>
> That is, it only gives you a pointer to what is passed in, but does not
> give you anything else to form any API against it.
> This way, not only does BPF have access to this information, so do the
> other tracers, through the new eprobe interface:
Or in a opposite way can eprobe add support for bare tracepoint ?
>
>   https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/Documentation/trace?id=7491e2c442781a1860181adb5ab472a52075f393
>
> (I just realized we are missing updates to the Documentation directory).
>
> event probes allows one to attach to an existing trace event, and then
> create a new trace event that can read through pointers. It uses the same
> interface that kprobes has.
>
> Just adding trace events to VFS that only have pointers would allow all of
> BPF, perf and ftrace access as eprobes could then get the data you are
> looking for.
>
> -- Steve
> .