Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 0/7] QEMU binary instrumentation prototype

[Pavel Dovgalyuk]

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Pavel Dovgalyuk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stefan Hajnoczi [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2018 4:07 PM
> To: Pavel Dovgalyuk
> Cc: 'Peter Maydell'; 'Pavel Dovgalyuk'; 'Paolo Bonzini'; address@hidden; 'QEMU
> Developers'; 'Lluís Vilanova'
> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 0/7] QEMU binary instrumentation 
> prototype
> 
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2018 at 02:56:29PM +0300, Pavel Dovgalyuk wrote:
> > > From: Peter Maydell [mailto:address@hidden
> > >
> > > This series doesn't seem to add anything to Documentation/ that
> > > describes the API we make available to plugins. I'm a lot more
> > > interested in reviewing the API that will be used by plugins
> > > than I am in the implementation at this stage. Can you provide
> > > a description/documentation of the API for review, please?
> >
> >
> > Here is the draft:
> 
> I like the minimal interface that you are proposing and that it is
> completely separate from QEMU-internal APIs.  This will make it easy to
> keep this public API cleanly separated from private internal APIs.
> 
> > Introduction
> > ============
> >
> > This document describes an API for creating the QEMU
> > instrumentation plugins.
> >
> > It is based on the following prior sources:
> >  - KVM Forum 2017 talk "Instrumenting, Introspection, and Debugging with 
> > QEMU"
> >    https://www.linux-kvm.org/images/3/3d/Introspect.pdf
> >  - Discussion on Lluis Vilanova instrumentation patch series
> >    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-09/msg03357.html
> >
> > The aim of the instrumentation is implementing different runtime
> > tracers that can track the executed instructions, memory and
> > hardware operations.
> >
> > Instrumenting the code
> > ======================
> >
> > Instrumentation subsystem exploits TCG helper mechanism to embed
> > callbacks into the translation blocks. These callbacks may be inserted
> > before the specific instructions, when the plugins require such filtering.
> >
> > Translator uses two functions for embedding the callbacks:
> >  - first function checks whether the current instruction should be
> >    instrumented
> >  - second function embeds the callback for executing the plugin-specific
> >    code before that instruction
> >
> > The similar method may be used for memory access instrumentation.
> >
> > QEMU->Plugin API
> > ================
> >
> > Instrumentation layer passes the requests from the translator
> > to the dynamically loaded plugins. Every plugin may provide
> > the following functions to perform the instrumentation:
> >
> >  1. bool plugin_init(const char *args);
> >     Initialization function. May return false if the plugin
> >     can't work in the current environment.
> 
> Please document how plugin loading and argument handling works.
> 
> Do you think unloading is necessary?  For example, on a long-running
> guest it could be useful to unload the plugin, modify and recompile it,
> and then load it again during development.  And maybe unloading is also
> useful in cases where a plugin produces a lot of data or slows down
> execution of a long-running guest.
> 
> >
> >  2. bool plugin_needs_before_insn(uint64_t pc, void *cpu);
> >     Returns true if the plugin needs to instrument the current instruction.
> >     It may use the address (pc) for making the decision or the guest
> >     CPU state (cpu), which can be passed back to QEMU core API
> >     (e.g., for reading the guest memory).
> >     This function is called at both translation and execution phases.
> 
> What type of address is 'pc' - guest virtual or guest physical?
> 
> Is the guest CPU state well-defined when this function is called?  For
> example, is reading CPU registers meaningful in this function since it
> could be called at pretty much any time?
> 
> Why is this function called during execution?  I expected this to be
> called at translation time only.  If a plugin decides at runtime to
> instrument instructions that were previously not instrumented, then it
> could flush the relevant TB(s) - that seems a lot more efficient than
> calling this function for every instruction that gets executed.  But
> maybe I am missing a use case for calling this at execution time...?
> 
> >  3. void plugin_before_insn(uint64_t pc, void *cpu);
> >     If the previous function returned true for some instruction,
> >     then this function will be called. This process is repeated before
> >     every execution of the instruction, if it was instrumented.
> 
> Plugins that instrument multiple kinds of instructions will have to
> first look up pc and decide which kind of instruction it is.  The plugin
> could keep a list or hash table, or it could read memory to check the
> guest code again.  This will be very repetitive - many plugins will need
> to do this.
> 
> A slightly different take on this API is:
> 
>   /* Plugin->QEMU API */
> 
>   /* Called by QEMU before translating an instruction
>    * @pc: guest virtual address of instruction
>    */
>   void plugin_pre_translate(void *cpu, uint64_t pc);
> 
>   /* QEMU->Plugin API */
> 
>   /* A callback invoked by QEMU before executing an instrumented
>    * instruction
>    * @opaque: plugin-specific data
>    */
>   typedef void (*InstrumentCallback)(void *cpu, void *opaque);
> 
>   /* Register a callback @cb each time the instruction at @pc is about
>    * to be executed
>    * @cpu: the cpu to instrument or NULL to instrument all cpus
>    * @opaque: plugin-specific data that is passed to @cb
>    */
>   void instrument(void *cpu, uint64_t pc,
>                   InstrumentCallback cb,
>                   void *opaque);
> 
>   /* Unregister a callback @cb previously registered using instrument()
>    */
>   void uninstrument(void *cpu, uint64_t pc,
>                     InstrumentCallback cb,
>                   void *opaque);
> 
> Here plugin_pre_translate() is similar to plugin_needs_before_insn(),
> but note it has no return value.  Instead of telling QEMU whether or not
> to instrument an instruction, it must call instrument() if it wishes to
> receive a callback immediately before a particular instruction is
> executed.
> 
> This is just an idea I wanted to share.  You understand the use cases
> for binary instrumentation much better than me.  Feel free to disregard
> if it doesn't fit.