History log of /linux-master/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-btf
Revision Date Author Comments
# 36e68442 09-Nov-2020 Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>

bpf: Load and verify kernel module BTFs

Add kernel module listener that will load/validate and unload module BTF.
Module BTFs gets ID generated for them, which makes it possible to iterate
them with existing BTF iteration API. They are given their respective module's
names, which will get reported through GET_OBJ_INFO API. They are also marked
as in-kernel BTFs for tooling to distinguish them from user-provided BTFs.

Also, similarly to vmlinux BTF, kernel module BTFs are exposed through
sysfs as /sys/kernel/btf/<module-name>. This is convenient for user-space
tools to inspect module BTF contents and dump their types with existing tools:

[vmuser@archvm bpf]$ ls -la /sys/kernel/btf
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Nov 4 19:46 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 0 Nov 4 19:46 ..

...

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 888 Nov 4 19:46 irqbypass
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 100225 Nov 4 19:46 kvm
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 35401 Nov 4 19:46 kvm_intel
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 120 Nov 4 19:46 pcspkr
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 399 Nov 4 19:46 serio_raw
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4094095 Nov 4 19:46 vmlinux

Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20201110011932.3201430-5-andrii@kernel.org


# 7fd78568 13-Aug-2019 Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>

btf: rename /sys/kernel/btf/kernel into /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux

Expose kernel's BTF under the name vmlinux to be more uniform with using
kernel module names as file names in the future.

Fixes: 341dfcf8d78e ("btf: expose BTF info through sysfs")
Suggested-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>


# 341dfcf8 12-Aug-2019 Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>

btf: expose BTF info through sysfs

Make .BTF section allocated and expose its contents through sysfs.

/sys/kernel/btf directory is created to contain all the BTFs present
inside kernel. Currently there is only kernel's main BTF, represented as
/sys/kernel/btf/kernel file. Once kernel modules' BTFs are supported,
each module will expose its BTF as /sys/kernel/btf/<module-name> file.

Current approach relies on a few pieces coming together:
1. pahole is used to take almost final vmlinux image (modulo .BTF and
kallsyms) and generate .BTF section by converting DWARF info into
BTF. This section is not allocated and not mapped to any segment,
though, so is not yet accessible from inside kernel at runtime.
2. objcopy dumps .BTF contents into binary file and subsequently
convert binary file into linkable object file with automatically
generated symbols _binary__btf_kernel_bin_start and
_binary__btf_kernel_bin_end, pointing to start and end, respectively,
of BTF raw data.
3. final vmlinux image is generated by linking this object file (and
kallsyms, if necessary). sysfs_btf.c then creates
/sys/kernel/btf/kernel file and exposes embedded BTF contents through
it. This allows, e.g., libbpf and bpftool access BTF info at
well-known location, without resorting to searching for vmlinux image
on disk (location of which is not standardized and vmlinux image
might not be even available in some scenarios, e.g., inside qemu
during testing).

Alternative approach using .incbin assembler directive to embed BTF
contents directly was attempted but didn't work, because sysfs_proc.o is
not re-compiled during link-vmlinux.sh stage. This is required, though,
to update embedded BTF data (initially empty data is embedded, then
pahole generates BTF info and we need to regenerate sysfs_btf.o with
updated contents, but it's too late at that point).

If BTF couldn't be generated due to missing or too old pahole,
sysfs_btf.c handles that gracefully by detecting that
_binary__btf_kernel_bin_start (weak symbol) is 0 and not creating
/sys/kernel/btf at all.

v2->v3:
- added Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-btf (Greg K-H);
- created proper kobject (btf_kobj) for btf directory (Greg K-H);
- undo v2 change of reusing vmlinux, as it causes extra kallsyms pass
due to initially missing __binary__btf_kernel_bin_{start/end} symbols;

v1->v2:
- allow kallsyms stage to re-use vmlinux generated by gen_btf();

Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>