tracing: Warn when an event dereferences a pointer in TP_printk()

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Currently on boot up and when modules are loaded, the trace event
infrastructure will examine the TP_printk's of every event looking to see
if it dereferences pointers on the ring buffer via printk formats like
"%pB" and such. What it doesn't do is check if the arguments themselves
do a dereference from a pointer.

This was brought with a fix[1] to the fsl_edma event that had in the
arguments of the TP_printk(): "__entry->edma->membase"

The __entry->edma is a pointer saved in the ring buffer. The dereference
from TP_printk() happens when the user reads the "trace" file which can be
seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months later! There is no
guarantee that the __entry->edma pointer will still be pointing to what it
was when it was recorded, and could crash the kernel when a user reads the
event.

Add logic to the test_event_printk() that also checks for this case and
warn if the event dereferences a pointer from the ring buffer.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260630200022.1826420-1-martin@kaiser.cx/

Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260630184836.74d477b6@gandalf.local.home
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Reviewed-by: Martin Kaiser <martin@kaiser.cx>
Reviewed-by: Vinod Koul <vkoul@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>

...

This commit is contained in:

Steven Rostedt 2026-06-30 18:48:36 -04:00

parent ac00ffdbbc

commit b5cc230af5

1 changed files with 29 additions and 6 deletions

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kernel/trace/trace_events.c

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