[PATCH 3/5] powerpc: ftrace: fix the comments for ftrace_modify_code

Li Bin huawei.libin at huawei.com
Fri Dec 4 18:27:45 AEDT 2015


There is no need to worry about module and __init text disappearing
case, because that ftrace has a module notifier that is called when
a module is being unloaded and before the text goes away and this
code grabs the ftrace_lock mutex and removes the module functions
from the ftrace list, such that it will no longer do any
modifications to that module's text, the update to make functions
be traced or not is done under the ftrace_lock mutex as well.
And by now, __init section codes should not been modified
by ftrace, because it is black listed in recordmcount.c and
ignored by ftrace.

Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh at kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus at samba.org>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe at ellerman.id.au>
Cc: linuxppc-dev at lists.ozlabs.org
Suggested-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt at goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Li Bin <huawei.libin at huawei.com>
---
 arch/powerpc/kernel/ftrace.c |   13 ++++++-------
 1 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/kernel/ftrace.c b/arch/powerpc/kernel/ftrace.c
index 44d4d8e..c6452b2 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/ftrace.c
+++ b/arch/powerpc/kernel/ftrace.c
@@ -47,13 +47,12 @@ ftrace_modify_code(unsigned long ip, unsigned int old, unsigned int new)
 	unsigned int replaced;
 
 	/*
-	 * Note: Due to modules and __init, code can
-	 *  disappear and change, we need to protect against faulting
-	 *  as well as code changing. We do this by using the
-	 *  probe_kernel_* functions.
-	 *
-	 * No real locking needed, this code is run through
-	 * kstop_machine, or before SMP starts.
+	 * Note:
+	 * We are paranoid about modifying text, as if a bug were to happen, it
+	 * could cause us to read or write to someplace that could cause harm.
+	 * Carefully read and modify the code with aarch64_insn_*() which uses
+	 * probe_kernel_*(), and make sure what we read is what we expected it
+	 * to be before modifying it.
 	 */
 
 	/* read the text we want to modify */
-- 
1.7.1



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