Re: [RFC PATCH 0/8] uprobe/x86: Add support to optimize prologue

[Jiri Olsa <olsajiri@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 01:40:49PM +0100, Jiri Olsa wrote:
> hi,
> the subject is bit too optimistic, in nutshell the idea is to allow
> optimization on top of emulated instructions and then add support to
> emulate more instructions with high presence in function prologues.
> 
> This patchset adds support to optimize uprobe on top of instruction
> that could be emulated and also adds support to emulate particular
> versions of mov and sub instructions to cover some of the user space
> functions prologues, like:
> 
>   pushq %rbp
>   movq  %rsp,%rbp
>   subq  $0xb0,%rsp
> 
> The idea is to store instructions on underlying 5 bytes and emulate
> them during the int3 and uprobe syscall execution:
> 
>   - install 'call trampoline' through standard int3 update
>   - if int3 is hit before we finish optimizing we emulate
>     all underlying instructions
>   - when call is installed the uprobe syscall will emulate
>     all underlying instructions

David, sorry I used wrong email.. I think the update here might
be a problem, any chance you could check?

thanks,
jirka


> 
> There's an additional issue that single instruction replacement does
> not have and it's the possibility of the user space code to jump in the
> middle of those 5 bytes. I think it's unlikely to happen at the function
> prologue, but uprobe could be placed anywhere. I'm not sure how to
> mitigate this other than having some enable/disable switch or config
> option, which is unfortunate.
> 
> The patchset is based on bpf-next/master with [1] changes merged in.
> 
> thanks,
> jirka
> 
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251117093137.572132-1-jolsa@kernel.org/T/#m95a3208943ec24c5eee17ad6113002fdc6776cf8
> ---
> Jiri Olsa (8):
>       uprobe/x86: Introduce struct arch_uprobe_xol object
>       uprobe/x86: Use struct arch_uprobe_xol in emulate callback
>       uprobe/x86: Add support to emulate mov reg,reg instructions
>       uprobe/x86: Add support to emulate sub imm,reg instructions
>       uprobe/x86: Add support to optimize on top of emulated instructions
>       selftests/bpf: Add test for mov and sub emulation
>       selftests/bpf: Add test for uprobe prologue optimization
>       selftests/bpf: Add race test for uprobe proglog optimization
> 
>  arch/x86/include/asm/uprobes.h                          |  35 +++++++---
>  arch/x86/kernel/uprobes.c                               | 336 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
>  include/linux/uprobes.h                                 |   1 +
>  kernel/events/uprobes.c                                 |   6 ++
>  tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/uprobe_syscall.c | 129 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
>  5 files changed, 434 insertions(+), 73 deletions(-)