Re: [PATCH RFC bpf-next 0/9] allow HID-BPF to do device IOs

["Toke Høiland-Jørgensen" <toke@redhat.com>]

Benjamin Tissoires <benjamin.tissoires@redhat.com> writes:

[...]
>> IIUC, the bpf_timer callback is just a function (subprog) from the
>> verifier PoV, so it is verified as whatever program type is creating the
>> timer. So in other words, as long as you setup the timer from inside a
>> tracing prog type, you should have access to all the same kfuncs, I
>> think?
>
> Yep, you are correct. But as mentioned above, I am now in trouble with
> the sleepable state:
> - I need to call timer_start() from a non sleepable tracing function
> (I'm in hard IRQ when dealing with a physical device)
> - but then, ideally, the callback function needs to be tagged as a
> sleepable one, so I can export my kfuncs which are doing kzalloc and
> device IO as such.
>
> However, I can not really teach the BPF verifier to do so:
> - it seems to check for the callback first when it is loaded, and
> there is no SEC() equivalent for static functions
> - libbpf doesn't have access to the callback as a prog as it has to be
> a static function, and thus isn't exported as a full-blown prog.
> - the verifier only checks for the callback when dealing with
> BPF_FUNC_timer_set_callback, which doesn't have a "flag" argument
> (though the validation of the callback has already been done while
> checking it first, so we are already too late to change the sleppable
> state of the callback)
>
> Right now, the only OK-ish version I have is declaring the kfunc as
> non-sleepable, but checking that we are in a different context than
> the IRQ of the initial event. This way, I am not crashing if this
> function is called from the initial IRQ, but will still crash if used
> outside of the hid context.
>
> This is not satisfactory, but I feel like it's going to be hard to
> teach the verifier that the callback function is sleepable in that
> case (maybe we could suffix the callback name, like we do for
> arguments, but this is not very clean either).

The callback is only set once when the timer is first setup; I *think*
it works to do the setup (bpf_timer_init() and bpf_timer_set_callback())
in the context you need (from a sleepable prog), but do the arming
(bpf_timer_start()) from a different program that is not itself sleepable?

-Toke