Re: [PATCH v1] powerpc: Include running function as first entry in save_stack_trace() and friends

Mark Rutland
2021-03-04T18:53:39Z

On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 07:22:53PM +0100, Marco Elver wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 19:02, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 06:25:33PM +0100, Marco Elver wrote:
> > > On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 04:59PM +0000, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 04:30:34PM +0100, Marco Elver wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 15:57, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
> > > > > > [adding Mark Brown]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The bigger problem here is that skipping is dodgy to begin with, and
> > > > > > this is still liable to break in some cases. One big concern is that
> > > > > > (especially with LTO) we cannot guarantee the compiler will not inline
> > > > > > or outline functions, causing the skipp value to be too large or too
> > > > > > small. That's liable to happen to callers, and in theory (though
> > > > > > unlikely in practice), portions of arch_stack_walk() or
> > > > > > stack_trace_save() could get outlined too.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Unless we can get some strong guarantees from compiler folk such that we
> > > > > > can guarantee a specific function acts boundary for unwinding (and
> > > > > > doesn't itself get split, etc), the only reliable way I can think to
> > > > > > solve this requires an assembly trampoline. Whatever we do is liable to
> > > > > > need some invasive rework.
> > > > >
> > > > > Will LTO and friends respect 'noinline'?
> > > >
> > > > I hope so (and suspect we'd have more problems otherwise), but I don't
> > > > know whether they actually so.
> > > >
> > > > I suspect even with 'noinline' the compiler is permitted to outline
> > > > portions of a function if it wanted to (and IIUC it could still make
> > > > specialized copies in the absence of 'noclone').
> > > >
> > > > > One thing I also noticed is that tail calls would also cause the stack
> > > > > trace to appear somewhat incomplete (for some of my tests I've
> > > > > disabled tail call optimizations).
> > > >
> > > > I assume you mean for a chain A->B->C where B tail-calls C, you get a
> > > > trace A->C? ... or is A going missing too?
> > >
> > > Correct, it's just the A->C outcome.
> >
> > I'd assumed that those cases were benign, e.g. for livepatching what
> > matters is what can be returned to, so B disappearing from the trace
> > isn't a problem there.
> >
> > Is the concern debugability, or is there a functional issue you have in
> > mind?
>
> For me, it's just been debuggability, and reliable test cases.
>
> > > > > Is there a way to also mark a function non-tail-callable?
> > > >
> > > > I think this can be bodged using __attribute__((optimize("$OPTIONS")))
> > > > on a caller to inhibit TCO (though IIRC GCC doesn't reliably support
> > > > function-local optimization options), but I don't expect there's any way
> > > > to mark a callee as not being tail-callable.
> > >
> > > I don't think this is reliable. It'd be
> > > __attribute__((optimize("-fno-optimize-sibling-calls"))), but doesn't
> > > work if applied to the function we do not want to tail-call-optimize,
> > > but would have to be applied to the function that does the tail-calling.
> >
> > Yup; that's what I meant then I said you could do that on the caller but
> > not the callee.
> >
> > I don't follow why you'd want to put this on the callee, though, so I
> > think I'm missing something. Considering a set of functions in different
> > compilation units:
> >
> > A->B->C->D->E->F->G->H->I->J->K
>
> I was having this problem with KCSAN, where the compiler would
> tail-call-optimize __tsan_X instrumentation.

Those are compiler-generated calls, right? When those are generated the
compilation unit (and whatever it has included) might not have provided
a prototype anyway, and the compiler has special knowledge of the
functions, so it feels like the compiler would need to inhibit TCO here
for this to be robust. For their intended usage subjecting them to TCO
doesn't seem to make sense AFAICT.

I suspect that compilers have some way of handling that; otherwise I'd
expect to have heard stories of mcount/fentry calls getting TCO'd and
causing problems. So maybe there's an easy fix there?

> This would mean that KCSAN runtime functions ended up in the trace,
> but the function where the access happened would not. However, I don't
> care about the runtime functions, and instead want to see the function
> where the access happened. In that case, I'd like to just mark
> __tsan_X and any other kcsan instrumentation functions as
> do-not-tail-call-optimize, which would solve the problem.

I understand why we don't want to TCO these calls, but given the calls
are implicitly generated, I strongly suspect it's better to fix the
implicit call generation to not be TCO'd to begin with.

> The solution today is that when you compile a kernel with KCSAN, every
> instrumented TU is compiled with -fno-optimize-sibling-calls. The
> better solution would be to just mark KCSAN runtime functions somehow,
> but permit tail calling other things. Although, I probably still want
> to see the full trace, and would decide that having
> -fno-optimize-sibling-calls is a small price to pay in a
> debug-only-kernel to get complete traces.
>
> > ... if K were marked in this way, and J was compiled with visibility of
> > this, J would stick around, but J's callers might not, and so the a
> > trace might see:
> >
> > A->J->K
> >
> > ... do you just care about the final caller, i.e. you just need
> > certainty that J will be in the trace?
>
> Yes. But maybe it's a special problem that only sanitizers have.

I reckon for basically any instrumentation we don't want calls to be
TCO'd, though I'm not immediately sure of cases beyond sanitizers and
mcount/fentry.

Thanks,
Mark.