Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754230Ab2FFOhe (ORCPT ); Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:37:34 -0400 Received: from mail4.hitachi.co.jp ([133.145.228.5]:46904 "EHLO mail4.hitachi.co.jp" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752357Ab2FFOhd (ORCPT ); Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:37:33 -0400 X-AuditID: b753bd60-9fe84ba000000655-f6-4fcf6b2adb49 X-AuditID: b753bd60-9fe84ba000000655-f6-4fcf6b2adb49 Message-ID: <4FCF6B27.2020008@hitachi.com> Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:37:27 +0900 From: Masami Hiramatsu Organization: Hitachi, Ltd., Japan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Frank Ch. Eigler" Cc: Steven Rostedt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Thomas Gleixner , Ingo Molnar , "H. Peter Anvin" , Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli , Andrew Morton , Frederic Weisbecker , yrl.pp-manager.tt@hitachi.com Subject: Re: [PATCH -tip v2 3/9] ftrace/x86: Support SAVE_REGS feature on i386 References: <20120605102734.27845.43401.stgit@localhost.localdomain> <20120605102802.27845.49309.stgit@localhost.localdomain> <1338928666.13348.538.camel@gandalf.stny.rr.com> <20120605212411.GC11575@redhat.com> <1338939470.13348.541.camel@gandalf.stny.rr.com> <20120605234133.GD11575@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <20120605234133.GD11575@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1769 Lines: 41 (2012/06/06 8:41), Frank Ch. Eigler wrote: > Hi - > >>> That would be the way for a kprobe to modify variables/values that >>> happen to be in the registers. In systemtap, for example: >>> # stap -g -e 'probe kernel.function("foo") { $bar = 1 }' >> >> And why would we want to allow this? >> Modifying variables with probes is another way to lead to disaster. [...] >> What real world example leads to external sources modifying internal >> core variables? With the obvious exception of rootkits. > > Among others, systemtap has been successfully used for fault injection > for development/testing, as well as band-aids for kernel security > vulnerabilities, where a small change of state can improve the state > of the system. Obviously, this functionality is restricted to highly > privileged users. I agree with Frank. Register restoring should be done as far as the ftrace is used for kprobes. Of course, one reason is for the fault injection, which is very useful for debugging system failure. And another technical reason is that we should do "optimization" transparently. IMHO, kprobes works normally doing something, optimized kprobes also should do so. But if you introduce FTRACE_OPS_FL_RSTR_REGS flag for restoring registers, it could be possible to provide corresponding flag from kprobes side. (perhaps KPROBE_FLAG_NOMODREGS? :)) Thank you, -- Masami HIRAMATSU Software Platform Research Dept. Linux Technology Center Hitachi, Ltd., Yokohama Research Laboratory E-mail: masami.hiramatsu.pt@hitachi.com -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/