Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:04:53 +0100
From: Torsten Duwe <duwe@lst.de>
To: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Cc: jeyu@redhat.com, jkosina@suse.cz, jikos@kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, rostedt@goodmis.org,
        kamalesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com, linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org,
        live-patching@vger.kernel.org, mbenes@suse.cz
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] ppc64le live patch: get rid of mini stack frame
Message-ID: <20160310130453.GA3983@lst.de>
References: <20160309172821.GC27913@lst.de> <20160309173017.GD27913@lst.de> <20160310122508.GR10940@pathway.suse.cz> <20160310125116.GS10940@pathway.suse.cz>
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On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 01:51:16PM +0100, Petr Mladek wrote:
> On Thu 2016-03-10 13:25:08, Petr Mladek wrote:
> > On Wed 2016-03-09 18:30:17, Torsten Duwe wrote:
> > > After the mini stack frame is no longer required for TOC storage, it can
> > > be eliminated iff the functionality of klp_return_helper, which required
> > > a stack frame for the extra return address previously, is carried out
> > > by the replacement function now. This requires _every_ live patch replacement
> > > function to execute the following (or similar) sequence of machine instructions
> > > just before every return to the original caller:
> > 
> > I have thought about it and it is a nono from my point of view.
> > It is too error prone, especially that there are functions that
> > call return on several locations.

Yes, that's what I think as well when I look at it.

> BTW: How is this solved in kretprobes? Or is it easier there?

Without any look at the code I assume it uses solution 3. Once
you have a probing framework in place, you can remember the real
return addresses in a data structure. As I wrote, the function
graph tracer does it this way so it would be abvious.

	Torsten