linux/kernel
Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi 5ab154f146 bpf: Introduce BPF standard streams
Add support for a stream API to the kernel and expose related kfuncs to
BPF programs. Two streams are exposed, BPF_STDOUT and BPF_STDERR. These
can be used for printing messages that can be consumed from user space,
thus it's similar in spirit to existing trace_pipe interface.

The kernel will use the BPF_STDERR stream to notify the program of any
errors encountered at runtime. BPF programs themselves may use both
streams for writing debug messages. BPF library-like code may use
BPF_STDERR to print warnings or errors on misuse at runtime.

The implementation of a stream is as follows. Everytime a message is
emitted from the kernel (directly, or through a BPF program), a record
is allocated by bump allocating from per-cpu region backed by a page
obtained using alloc_pages_nolock(). This ensures that we can allocate
memory from any context. The eventual plan is to discard this scheme in
favor of Alexei's kmalloc_nolock() [0].

This record is then locklessly inserted into a list (llist_add()) so
that the printing side doesn't require holding any locks, and works in
any context. Each stream has a maximum capacity of 4MB of text, and each
printed message is accounted against this limit.

Messages from a program are emitted using the bpf_stream_vprintk kfunc,
which takes a stream_id argument in addition to working otherwise
similar to bpf_trace_vprintk.

The bprintf buffer helpers are extracted out to be reused for printing
the string into them before copying it into the stream, so that we can
(with the defined max limit) format a string and know its true length
before performing allocations of the stream element.

For consuming elements from a stream, we expose a bpf(2) syscall command
named BPF_PROG_STREAM_READ_BY_FD, which allows reading data from the
stream of a given prog_fd into a user space buffer. The main logic is
implemented in bpf_stream_read(). The log messages are queued in
bpf_stream::log by the bpf_stream_vprintk kfunc, and then pulled and
ordered correctly in the stream backlog.

For this purpose, we hold a lock around bpf_stream_backlog_peek(), as
llist_del_first() (if we maintained a second lockless list for the
backlog) wouldn't be safe from multiple threads anyway. Then, if we
fail to find something in the backlog log, we splice out everything from
the lockless log, and place it in the backlog log, and then return the
head of the backlog. Once the full length of the element is consumed, we
will pop it and free it.

The lockless list bpf_stream::log is a LIFO stack. Elements obtained
using a llist_del_all() operation are in LIFO order, thus would break
the chronological ordering if printed directly. Hence, this batch of
messages is first reversed. Then, it is stashed into a separate list in
the stream, i.e. the backlog_log. The head of this list is the actual
message that should always be returned to the caller. All of this is
done in bpf_stream_backlog_fill().

From the kernel side, the writing into the stream will be a bit more
involved than the typical printk. First, the kernel typically may print
a collection of messages into the stream, and parallel writers into the
stream may suffer from interleaving of messages. To ensure each group of
messages is visible atomically, we can lift the advantage of using a
lockless list for pushing in messages.

To enable this, we add a bpf_stream_stage() macro, and require kernel
users to use bpf_stream_printk statements for the passed expression to
write into the stream. Underneath the macro, we have a message staging
API, where a bpf_stream_stage object on the stack accumulates the
messages being printed into a local llist_head, and then a commit
operation splices the whole batch into the stream's lockless log list.

This is especially pertinent for rqspinlock deadlock messages printed to
program streams. After this change, we see each deadlock invocation as a
non-interleaving contiguous message without any confusion on the
reader's part, improving their user experience in debugging the fault.

While programs cannot benefit from this staged stream writing API, they
could just as well hold an rqspinlock around their print statements to
serialize messages, hence this is kept kernel-internal for now.

Overall, this infrastructure provides NMI-safe any context printing of
messages to two dedicated streams.

Later patches will add support for printing splats in case of BPF arena
page faults, rqspinlock deadlocks, and cond_break timeouts, and
integration of this facility into bpftool for dumping messages to user
space.

  [0]: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20250501032718.65476-1-alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com

Reviewed-by: Eduard Zingerman <eddyz87@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Emil Tsalapatis <emil@etsalapatis.com>
Signed-off-by: Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250703204818.925464-3-memxor@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
2025-07-03 19:30:06 -07:00
..
bpf bpf: Introduce BPF standard streams 2025-07-03 19:30:06 -07:00
cgroup Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/bpf/bpf after rc3 2025-06-26 09:49:39 -07:00
configs Kbuild updates for v6.16 2025-06-07 10:05:35 -07:00
debug TTY/Serial driver updates for 6.15-rc1 2025-04-02 18:17:33 -07:00
dma dma-mapping updates for Linux 6.16: 2025-05-27 20:09:06 -07:00
entry entry: Inline syscall_exit_to_user_mode() 2025-04-29 08:27:10 +02:00
events - Avoid a crash on a heterogeneous machine where not all cores support the 2025-06-22 10:11:45 -07:00
futex futex: Verify under the lock if hash can be replaced 2025-06-11 17:24:09 +02:00
gcov kbuild: require gcc-8 and binutils-2.30 2025-04-30 21:53:35 +02:00
irq genirq/irq_sim: Initialize work context pointers properly 2025-06-13 15:36:35 +02:00
kcsan treewide, timers: Rename destroy_timer_on_stack() as timer_destroy_on_stack() 2025-05-08 19:49:33 +02:00
livepatch sched,livepatch: Untangle cond_resched() and live-patching 2025-05-14 13:16:24 +02:00
locking Generic: 2025-06-02 12:24:58 -07:00
module Kbuild updates for v6.16 2025-06-07 10:05:35 -07:00
power - The 11 patch series "Add folio_mk_pte()" from Matthew Wilcox 2025-05-31 15:44:16 -07:00
printk printk changes for 6.15 2025-03-27 19:22:24 -07:00
rcu rcu: Return early if callback is not specified 2025-06-20 15:31:48 -04:00
sched sched_ext, sched/core: Don't call scx_group_set_weight() prematurely from sched_create_group() 2025-06-17 08:19:55 -10:00
time posix-cpu-timers: fix race between handle_posix_cpu_timers() and posix_cpu_timer_del() 2025-06-13 10:55:49 -07:00
trace bpf: Add show_fdinfo for kprobe_multi 2025-07-03 19:29:42 -07:00
.gitignore
acct.c acct: block access to kernel internal filesystems 2025-02-12 12:24:16 +01:00
async.c async: Use a dedicated unbound workqueue with raised min_active 2024-02-09 11:13:59 -10:00
audit_fsnotify.c
audit_tree.c replace collect_mounts()/drop_collected_mounts() with a safer variant 2025-06-23 14:01:49 -04:00
audit_watch.c fs: add kern_path_locked_negative() 2025-04-15 11:32:34 +02:00
audit.c audit: record AUDIT_ANOM_* events regardless of presence of rules 2025-04-11 14:14:41 -04:00
audit.h audit: change context data from secid to lsm_prop 2024-10-11 14:34:16 -04:00
auditfilter.c audit: fix suffixed '/' filename matching 2024-12-05 19:22:38 -05:00
auditsc.c fs: dedup handling of struct filename init and refcounts bumps 2025-03-18 15:34:27 +01:00
backtracetest.c backtracetest: add MODULE_DESCRIPTION() 2024-06-24 22:24:55 -07:00
bounds.c bounds: Use the right number of bits for power-of-two CONFIG_NR_CPUS 2024-04-29 08:29:29 -07:00
capability.c capability: Remove unused has_capability 2025-03-07 22:03:09 -06:00
cfi.c Modules changes for 6.15-rc1 2025-03-30 15:44:36 -07:00
compat.c
configs.c
context_tracking.c context_tracking: Make RCU watch ct_kernel_exit_state() warning 2025-03-04 18:44:29 -08:00
cpu_pm.c
cpu.c perf: Remove too early and redundant CPU hotplug handling 2025-05-08 21:50:19 +02:00
crash_core.c crash: Use note name macros 2025-02-10 16:56:58 -08:00
crash_dump_dm_crypt.c crash_dump: retrieve dm crypt keys in kdump kernel 2025-05-21 10:48:21 -07:00
crash_reserve.c crash: fix spelling mistake "crahskernel" -> "crashkernel" 2025-05-11 17:54:10 -07:00
cred.c cred: remove old {override,revert}_creds() helpers 2024-12-02 11:25:09 +01:00
delayacct.c delayacct: remove redundant code and adjust indentation 2025-05-27 19:40:33 -07:00
dma.c
elfcorehdr.c crash: remove dependency of FA_DUMP on CRASH_DUMP 2024-02-23 17:48:22 -08:00
exec_domain.c
exit.c - Avoid a crash on a heterogeneous machine where not all cores support the 2025-06-22 10:11:45 -07:00
exit.h
extable.c
fail_function.c
fork.c - The 11 patch series "Add folio_mk_pte()" from Matthew Wilcox 2025-05-31 15:44:16 -07:00
freezer.c sched/fair: Fix external p->on_rq users 2024-10-14 09:14:35 +02:00
gen_kheaders.sh Revert "kheaders: Ignore silly-rename files" 2025-03-15 21:22:52 +09:00
groups.c
hung_task.c hung_task: show the blocker task if the task is hung on semaphore 2025-05-11 17:54:08 -07:00
iomem.c mm/memremap: Pass down MEMREMAP_* flags to arch_memremap_wb() 2025-02-21 15:05:38 +01:00
irq_work.c kasan: make kasan_record_aux_stack_noalloc() the default behaviour 2025-01-13 22:40:36 -08:00
jump_label.c jump_label: Use RCU in all users of __module_text_address(). 2025-03-10 11:54:46 +01:00
kallsyms_internal.h kallsyms: get rid of code for absolute kallsyms 2024-07-20 16:33:21 +09:00
kallsyms_selftest.c kallsyms: Use kthread_run_on_cpu() 2025-01-02 22:12:12 +01:00
kallsyms_selftest.h
kallsyms.c kallsyms: Remove KALLSYMS_ABSOLUTE_PERCPU 2025-02-18 10:16:04 +01:00
kcmp.c kcmp: improve performance adding an unlikely hint to task comparisons 2025-02-21 10:25:33 +01:00
Kconfig.freezer
Kconfig.hz kernel: Fix "select" wording on HZ_250 description 2025-02-21 09:20:30 +01:00
Kconfig.kexec - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
Kconfig.locks
Kconfig.preempt sched: No PREEMPT_RT=y for all{yes,mod}config 2024-11-07 15:25:05 +01:00
kcov.c kcov: mark in_softirq_really() as __always_inline 2024-12-30 17:59:08 -08:00
kexec_core.c kexec: define functions to map and unmap segments 2025-04-29 15:54:53 -04:00
kexec_elf.c kexec: initialize ELF lowest address to ULONG_MAX 2025-03-16 22:30:47 -07:00
kexec_file.c - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
kexec_handover.c kho: initialize tail pages for higher order folios properly 2025-06-19 20:48:02 -07:00
kexec_internal.h kexec: add KHO support to kexec file loads 2025-05-12 23:50:40 -07:00
kexec.c crash: add a new kexec flag for hotplug support 2024-04-23 14:59:01 +10:00
kheaders.c kheaders: Simplify attribute through __BIN_ATTR_SIMPLE_RO() 2024-12-24 09:46:49 +01:00
kprobes.c kprobes: Use RCU in all users of __module_text_address(). 2025-03-10 11:54:46 +01:00
ksyms_common.c
ksysfs.c kernel/ksysfs.c: simplify bin_attribute definition 2025-01-07 16:59:15 +01:00
kthread.c treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
latencytop.c treewide: const qualify ctl_tables where applicable 2025-01-28 13:48:37 +01:00
Makefile - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
module_signature.c
notifier.c reboot: move reboot_notifier_list to kernel/reboot.c 2024-11-05 17:12:31 -08:00
nsproxy.c kernel/nsproxy: remove unnecessary guards 2025-05-09 13:13:54 +02:00
padata.c padata: do not leak refcount in reorder_work 2025-05-19 13:44:16 +08:00
panic.c - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
params.c module: ensure that kobject_put() is safe for module type kobjects 2025-05-07 20:24:59 +02:00
pid_namespace.c pid: Do not set pid_max in new pid namespaces 2025-03-06 10:18:36 +01:00
pid_sysctl.h treewide: const qualify ctl_tables where applicable 2025-01-28 13:48:37 +01:00
pid.c pidfs: detect refcount bugs 2025-05-06 13:59:00 +02:00
profile.c profiling: remove profile=sleep support 2024-08-04 13:36:28 -07:00
ptrace.c ptrace: introduce PTRACE_SET_SYSCALL_INFO request 2025-05-11 17:48:15 -07:00
range.c
reboot.c - The 7 patch series "powerpc/crash: use generic crashkernel 2025-04-01 10:06:52 -07:00
regset.c regset: use kvzalloc() for regset_get_alloc() 2024-04-25 21:07:03 -07:00
relay.c relay: remove unused relay_late_setup_files 2025-05-11 17:54:09 -07:00
resource_kunit.c resource, kunit: fix user-after-free in resource_test_region_intersects() 2024-10-09 12:47:19 -07:00
resource.c resource: replace open coded variant of DEFINE_RES() 2025-03-21 22:10:05 -07:00
rseq.c rseq: Fix segfault on registration when rseq_cs is non-zero 2025-03-06 22:26:49 +01:00
scftorture.c scftorture: Handle NULL argument passed to scf_add_to_free_list(). 2024-11-14 16:09:51 -08:00
scs.c
seccomp.c seccomp: avoid the lock trip seccomp_filter_release in common case 2025-02-24 11:17:10 -08:00
signal.c signal: Move signal ctl tables into signal.c 2025-04-09 13:32:16 +02:00
smp.c CSD-lock pull request for v6.14 2025-01-28 11:34:03 -08:00
smpboot.c
smpboot.h
softirq.c lockdep: Fix wait context check on softirq for PREEMPT_RT 2025-03-25 10:46:44 +01:00
stackleak.c treewide: const qualify ctl_tables where applicable 2025-01-28 13:48:37 +01:00
stacktrace.c
static_call_inline.c Modules changes for 6.15-rc1 2025-03-30 15:44:36 -07:00
static_call.c
stop_machine.c stop-machine: Add comment for rcu_momentary_eqs() 2025-03-11 10:15:52 -07:00
sys_ni.c Probes updates for v6.11: 2024-07-18 12:19:20 -07:00
sys.c futex: Add basic infrastructure for local task local hash 2025-05-03 12:02:07 +02:00
sysctl-test.c sysctl: move u8 register test to lib/test_sysctl.c 2025-04-14 14:13:41 +02:00
sysctl.c sparc: mv sparc sysctls into their own file under arch/sparc/kernel 2025-04-09 13:32:16 +02:00
task_work.c kasan: make kasan_record_aux_stack_noalloc() the default behaviour 2025-01-13 22:40:36 -08:00
taskstats.c fdget(), more trivial conversions 2024-11-03 01:28:06 -05:00
torture.c torture: Add get_torture_init_jiffies() for test-start time 2025-02-05 07:14:24 -08:00
tracepoint.c tracepoint: Print the function symbol when tracepoint_debug is set 2025-03-21 15:30:10 -04:00
tsacct.c tsacct: replace strncpy() with strscpy() 2024-07-12 16:39:53 -07:00
ucount.c ucount: use rcuref_t for reference counting 2025-03-16 22:30:50 -07:00
uid16.c
uid16.h
umh.c treewide: const qualify ctl_tables where applicable 2025-01-28 13:48:37 +01:00
up.c
user_namespace.c uidgid: add map_id_range_up() 2025-02-12 12:12:27 +01:00
user-return-notifier.c
user.c uidgid: make sure we fit into one cacheline 2024-09-12 12:16:09 +02:00
usermode_driver.c
utsname_sysctl.c treewide: const qualify ctl_tables where applicable 2025-01-28 13:48:37 +01:00
utsname.c
vhost_task.c vhost_task: fix vhost_task_create() documentation 2025-04-18 10:08:11 -04:00
vmcore_info.c crash: export PAGE_UNACCEPTED_MAPCOUNT_VALUE to vmcoreinfo 2025-05-11 17:54:04 -07:00
watch_queue.c vfs-6.15-rc1.pipe 2025-03-24 09:52:37 -07:00
watchdog_buddy.c
watchdog_perf.c - The 7 patch series "powerpc/crash: use generic crashkernel 2025-04-01 10:06:52 -07:00
watchdog.c kernel/watchdog: add /sys/kernel/{hard,soft}lockup_count 2025-05-21 10:48:22 -07:00
workqueue_internal.h
workqueue.c workqueue: Initialize wq_isolated_cpumask in workqueue_init_early() 2025-06-17 08:58:29 -10:00