Re: [PATCH 1/5] perf jitdump: Fix PID namespace detection

Ilya Leoshkevich
2025-11-07T08:20:02Z

On Thu, 2025-11-06 at 18:16 -0800, Namhyung Kim wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 08:10:24PM +0100, Ilya Leoshkevich wrote:
> > perf inject fails to detect jitdump file produced by a process
> > running in a different PID namespace if this process has not exited
> > yet.
> >
> > The PID namespace heuristic in jit_detect() compares two PIDs:
> >
> > * pid: outermost NStgid of mmap(jitdump) caller from perf's PoV.
> > * nsinfo__nstgid(nsi): innermost NStgid of mmap(jitdump) caller
> > from
> >                        perf's PoV.
> >
> > The semantics of the in_pidns variable can be seen in, e.g.,
> > nsinfo__get_nspid(): it's true if and only if perf and the profiled
> > process are in different PID namespaces.
> >
> > The current logic is clearly inverted: if pid and
> > nsinfo__nstgid(nsi)
> > are different, then the profiled process must be in a different PID
> > namespace. This, of course, ignores that fact that they may end up
> > being equal by accident, but that's not the point here.
> >
> > Fix by flipping the comparison.
> >
> > Changing just that, however, breaks the case when the process has
> > exited. Add explicit support for that by adding "synthesized" field
> > to
> > nsinfo, which tracks whether NStgid was obtained from a running
> > process (ignoring considerations of PID reuse or running inject on
> > a different machine). When the namespace information is
> > synthesized,
> > assume the process ran in a different PID namespace.
>
> I'm not sure I'm following.  It'd be great if anyone understand the
> topic well could review.

Perhaps some data from the testcase from [5/5] can make it more clear.
Here are the PIDs that exist in reality:

unshare[a] perf-record unshare[b] jshell
Host PIDNS: 1000 1001 1002 1003
PIDNS[a]: - 1 2 3
PIDNS[b]: - - - 1

In jit_detect() we deal with 2 of them.

- pid is jshell@PIDNS[a].
It is taken from the MMAP2 event, this is how perf sees jshell.

- pid2 is jshell@PIDNS[b].
It is taken from "jit-1.dump", this is how jshell sees itself.

- nsinfo__nstgid(nsi) ideally should be jshell@PIDNS[b].
This is jshell's innermost NStgid.
But perf can see it differently. This is the core of the problem this
series deals with.

Why does nsinfo__nstgid(nsi) vary? Because the kernel does not record
it, and perf has to guess it. I have a WIP patch to fix that [1], but
it needs a lot more work at this point.

How does perf guess it? It looks into /proc/$PID/status. This is quite
unreliable, but this is the best perf can do under circumstances. As a
result we have 3 possibilities:

- The original process is still around. This is the buggy case. In this
case nsinfo__nstgid(nsi) == jshell@PIDNS[b]. IMHO this is a very
clear indication of namespacing, and that's why the condition should
be flipped.

- The original process has exited and PID was not reused. I believe
this is the use case the current code has been extensively tested
with. In this case perf assumes there was no namespacing and
nsinfo__nstgid(nsi) == pid. That's why I need the "synthesized"
field: to indicate that NStgid is just an assumption and didn't come
from any real data source.

- The original process has exited ans PID was reused. I am not trying
to deal with this here, because this is rare and absolutely anything
is possible. The only concern is running perf inject on a different
machine, but I'm also not sure whether we should care about this.

[1]
https://github.com/iii-i/linux/commit/4b519b774eed850abe0757df39be13a704d2748e

[...]

> > diff --git a/tools/perf/util/namespaces.h
> > b/tools/perf/util/namespaces.h
> > index e95c79b80e27c..41ba2ea8137e5 100644
> > --- a/tools/perf/util/namespaces.h
> > +++ b/tools/perf/util/namespaces.h
> > @@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ DECLARE_RC_STRUCT(nsinfo) {
> >   bool in_pidns;
> >   char *mntns_path;
> >   refcount_t refcnt;
> > + bool synthesized;
>
> It'd be nice if you can put this along with other bool fields.

Sure, will do.

[...]
>