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While writing an email explaining the "bit = 0" logic for a discussion on
making ftrace_test_recursion_trylock() disable preemption, I discovered a
path that makes the "not do the logic if bit is zero" unsafe.
The recursion logic is done in hot paths like the function tracer. Thus,
any code executed causes noticeable overhead. Thus, tricks are done to try
to limit the amount of code executed. This included the recursion testing
logic.
Having recursion testing is important, as there are many paths that can
end up in an infinite recursion cycle when tracing every function in the
kernel. Thus protection is needed to prevent that from happening.
Because it is OK to recurse due to different running context levels (e.g.
an interrupt preempts a trace, and then a trace occurs in the interrupt
handler), a set of bits are used to know which context one is in (normal,
softirq, irq and NMI). If a recursion occurs in the same level, it is
prevented*.
Then there are infrastructure levels of recursion as well. When more than
one callback is attached to the same function to trace, it calls a loop
function to iterate over all the callbacks. Both the callbacks and the
loop function have recursion protection. The callbacks use the
"ftrace_test_recursion_trylock()" which has a "function" set of context
bits to test, and the loop function calls the internal
trace_test_and_set_recursion() directly, with an "internal" set of bits.
If an architecture does not implement all the features supported by ftrace
then the callbacks are never called directly, and the loop function is
called instead, which will implement the features of ftrace.
Since both the loop function and the callbacks do recursion protection, it
was seemed unnecessary to do it in both locations. Thus, a trick was made
to have the internal set of recursion bits at a more significant bit
location than the function bits. Then, if any of the higher bits were set,
the logic of the function bits could be skipped, as any new recursion
would first have to go through the loop function.
This is true for architectures that do not support all the ftrace
features, because all functions being traced must first go through the
loop function before going to the callbacks. But this is not true for
architectures that support all the ftrace features. That's because the
loop function could be called due to two callbacks attached to the same
function, but then a recursion function inside the callback could be
called that does not share any other callback, and it will be called
directly.
i.e.
traced_function_1: [ more than one callback tracing it ]
call loop_func
loop_func:
trace_recursion set internal bit
call callback
callback:
trace_recursion [ skipped because internal bit is set, return 0 ]
call traced_function_2
traced_function_2: [ only traced by above callback ]
call callback
callback:
trace_recursion [ skipped because internal bit is set, return 0 ]
call traced_function_2
[ wash, rinse, repeat, BOOM! out of shampoo! ]
Thus, the "bit == 0 skip" trick is not safe, unless the loop function is
call for all functions.
Since we want to encourage architectures to implement all ftrace features,
having them slow down due to this extra logic may encourage the
maintainers to update to the latest ftrace features. And because this
logic is only safe for them, remove it completely.
[*] There is on layer of recursion that is allowed, and that is to allow
for the transition between interrupt context (normal -> softirq ->
irq -> NMI), because a trace may occur before the context update is
visible to the trace recursion logic.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Cc: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
Cc: Petr Mladek <[email protected]>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
Cc: "James E.J. Bottomley" <[email protected]>
Cc: Helge Deller <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <[email protected]>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email protected]>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <[email protected]>
Cc: Paul Walmsley <[email protected]>
Cc: Palmer Dabbelt <[email protected]>
Cc: Albert Ou <[email protected]>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <[email protected]>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <[email protected]>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <[email protected]>
Cc: Jiri Kosina <[email protected]>
Cc: Miroslav Benes <[email protected]>
Cc: Joe Lawrence <[email protected]>
Cc: Colin Ian King <[email protected]>
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu <[email protected]>
Cc: "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <[email protected]>
Cc: Nicholas Piggin <[email protected]>
Cc: Jisheng Zhang <[email protected]>
Cc: =?utf-8?b?546L6LSH?= <[email protected]>
Cc: Guo Ren <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Fixes: edc15cafcbfa3 ("tracing: Avoid unnecessary multiple recursion checks")
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <[email protected]>
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