Re: [RFC PATCH v4 1/2] arm64: Introduce stack trace reliability checks in the unwinder

Madhavan T. Venkataraman
2021-05-21T17:23:56Z

On 5/21/21 11:11 AM, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 11:00:17PM -0500, madvenka@linux.microsoft.com wrote:
>
>> Other reliability checks will be added in the future.
>
> ...
>
>> + frame->reliable = true;
>> +
>
> All these checks are good checks but as you say there's more stuff that
> we need to add (like your patch 2 here) so I'm slightly nervous about
> actually setting the reliable flag here without even a comment. Equally
> well there's no actual use of this until arch_stack_walk_reliable() gets
> implemented so it's not like it's causing any problems and it gives us
> the structure to start building up the rest of the checks.
>

OK. So how about changing the field from a flag to an enum that says exactly
what happened with the frame?

enum {
FRAME_NORMAL = 0,
FRAME_UNALIGNED,
FRAME_NOT_ACCESSIBLE,
FRAME_RECURSION,
FRAME_GRAPH_ERROR,
FRAME_INVALID_TEXT_ADDRESS,
FRAME_UNRELIABLE_FUNCTION,
FRAME_NUM_STATUS,
} frame_status;

struct stackframe {
...
enum frame_status status;
};

unwind_frame()
{
frame->status = FRAME_NORMAL;

Then, for each situation, change the status appropriately.
}

Eventually, arch_stack_walk_reliable() could just declare the stack trace
as unreliable if status != FRAME_NORMAL.

Also, the caller can get an exact idea of why the stack trace failed.

Is that acceptable?

> The other thing I guess is the question of if we want to bother flagging
> frames as unrelaible when we return an error; I don't see an issue with
> it and it may turn out to make it easier to do something in the future
> so I'm fine with that
Initially, I thought that there is no need to flag it for errors. But Josh
had a comment that the stack trace is indeed unreliable on errors. Again, the
word unreliable is the one causing the problem.

The above enum-based solution addresses Josh's comment as well.

Let me know if this is good.

Thanks!

Madhavan