Add support for deferred userspace unwind to perf.
Where perf currently relies on in-place stack unwinding; from NMI
context and all that. This moves the userspace part of the unwind to
right before the return-to-userspace.
This has two distinct benefits, the biggest is that it moves the
unwind to a faultable context. It becomes possible to fault in debug
info (.eh_frame, SFrame etc.) that might not otherwise be readily
available. And secondly, it de-duplicates the user callchain where
multiple samples happen during the same kernel entry.
To facilitate this the perf interface is extended with a new record
type:
PERF_RECORD_CALLCHAIN_DEFERRED
and two new attribute flags:
perf_event_attr::defer_callchain - to request the user unwind be deferred
perf_event_attr::defer_output - to request PERF_RECORD_CALLCHAIN_DEFERRED records
The existing PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE callchain section gets a new
context type:
PERF_CONTEXT_USER_DEFERRED
After which will come a single entry, denoting the 'cookie' of the
deferred callchain that should be attached here, matching the 'cookie'
field of the above mentioned PERF_RECORD_CALLCHAIN_DEFERRED.
The 'defer_callchain' flag is expected on all events with
PERF_SAMPLE_CALLCHAIN. The 'defer_output' flag is expect on the event
responsible for collecting side-band events (like mmap, comm etc.).
Setting 'defer_output' on multiple events will get you duplicated
PERF_RECORD_CALLCHAIN_DEFERRED records.
Based on earlier patches by Josh and Steven.
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251023150002.GR4067720@noisy.programming.kicks-ass.net
Peter Zijlstra
c69993ecdd