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Commit 65a7fa2e authored by Andrii Nakryiko's avatar Andrii Nakryiko Committed by Alexei Starovoitov
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libbpf: Add ability to fetch bpf_program's underlying instructions



Add APIs providing read-only access to bpf_program BPF instructions ([0]).
This is useful for diagnostics purposes, but it also allows a cleaner
support for cloning BPF programs after libbpf did all the FD resolution
and CO-RE relocations, subprog instructions appending, etc. Currently,
cloning BPF program is possible only through hijacking a half-broken
bpf_program__set_prep() API, which doesn't really work well for anything
but most primitive programs. For instance, set_prep() API doesn't allow
adjusting BPF program load parameters which are necessary for loading
fentry/fexit BPF programs (the case where BPF program cloning is
a necessity if doing some sort of mass-attachment functionality).

Given bpf_program__set_prep() API is set to be deprecated, having
a cleaner alternative is a must. libbpf internally already keeps track
of linear array of struct bpf_insn, so it's not hard to expose it. The
only gotcha is that libbpf previously freed instructions array during
bpf_object load time, which would make this API much less useful overall,
because in between bpf_object__open() and bpf_object__load() a lot of
changes to instructions are done by libbpf.

So this patch makes libbpf hold onto prog->insns array even after BPF
program loading. I think this is a small price for added functionality
and improved introspection of BPF program code.

See retsnoop PR ([1]) for how it can be used in practice and code
savings compared to relying on bpf_program__set_prep().

  [0] Closes: https://github.com/libbpf/libbpf/issues/298
  [1] https://github.com/anakryiko/retsnoop/pull/1

Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAlexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20211025224531.1088894-3-andrii@kernel.org
parent de5d0dce
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