perf,x86: avoid missing caller address in stack traces captured in uprobe

When tracing user functions with uprobe functionality, it's common to
install the probe (e.g., a BPF program) at the first instruction of the
function. This is often going to be `push %rbp` instruction in function
preamble, which means that within that function frame pointer hasn't
been established yet. This leads to consistently missing an actual
caller of the traced function, because perf_callchain_user() only
records current IP (capturing traced function) and then following frame
pointer chain (which would be caller's frame, containing the address of
caller's caller).

So when we have target_1 -> target_2 -> target_3 call chain and we are
tracing an entry to target_3, captured stack trace will report
target_1 -> target_3 call chain, which is wrong and confusing.

This patch proposes a x86-64-specific heuristic to detect `push %rbp`
(`push %ebp` on 32-bit architecture) instruction being traced. Given
entire kernel implementation of user space stack trace capturing works
under assumption that user space code was compiled with frame pointer
register (%rbp/%ebp) preservation, it seems pretty reasonable to use
this instruction as a strong indicator that this is the entry to the
function. In that case, return address is still pointed to by %rsp/%esp,
so we fetch it and add to stack trace before proceeding to unwind the
rest using frame pointer-based logic.

We also check for `endbr64` (for 64-bit modes) as another common pattern
for function entry, as suggested by Josh Poimboeuf. Even if we get this
wrong sometimes for uprobes attached not at the function entry, it's OK
because stack trace will still be overall meaningful, just with one
extra bogus entry. If we don't detect this, we end up with guaranteed to
be missing caller function entry in the stack trace, which is worse
overall.

Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240729175223.23914-1-andrii@kernel.org

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/uprobes.h b/include/linux/uprobes.h
index b503fafb7fb3..a270a5892ab4 100644
--- a/include/linux/uprobes.h
+++ b/include/linux/uprobes.h
@@ -76,6 +76,8 @@ struct uprobe_task {
 	struct uprobe			*active_uprobe;
 	unsigned long			xol_vaddr;
 
+	struct arch_uprobe              *auprobe;
+
 	struct return_instance		*return_instances;
 	unsigned int			depth;
 };