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Commit e5069b9c authored by Dmitrii Banshchikov's avatar Dmitrii Banshchikov Committed by Alexei Starovoitov
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bpf: Support pointers in global func args



Add an ability to pass a pointer to a type with known size in arguments
of a global function. Such pointers may be used to overcome the limit on
the maximum number of arguments, avoid expensive and tricky workarounds
and to have multiple output arguments.

A referenced type may contain pointers but indirect access through them
isn't supported.

The implementation consists of two parts.  If a global function has an
argument that is a pointer to a type with known size then:

  1) In btf_check_func_arg_match(): check that the corresponding
register points to NULL or to a valid memory region that is large enough
to contain the expected argument's type.

  2) In btf_prepare_func_args(): set the corresponding register type to
PTR_TO_MEM_OR_NULL and its size to the size of the expected type.

Only global functions are supported because allowance of pointers for
static functions might break validation. Consider the following
scenario. A static function has a pointer argument. A caller passes
pointer to its stack memory. Because the callee can change referenced
memory verifier cannot longer assume any particular slot type of the
caller's stack memory hence the slot type is changed to SLOT_MISC.  If
there is an operation that relies on slot type other than SLOT_MISC then
verifier won't be able to infer safety of the operation.

When verifier sees a static function that has a pointer argument
different from PTR_TO_CTX then it skips arguments check and continues
with "inline" validation with more information available. The operation
that relies on the particular slot type now succeeds.

Because global functions were not allowed to have pointer arguments
different from PTR_TO_CTX it's not possible to break existing and valid
code.

Signed-off-by: default avatarDmitrii Banshchikov <me@ubique.spb.ru>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAlexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Acked-by: default avatarAndrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20210212205642.620788-4-me@ubique.spb.ru
parent 4ddb7416
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