On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 6:37 AM Daniel Borkmann <dan...@iogearbox.net> wrote: > > On 5/5/20 1:48 AM, Alexei Starovoitov wrote: > > On Sat, May 02, 2020 at 01:48:51AM +0200, Daniel Borkmann wrote: > >> On 4/27/20 11:45 AM, Lorenz Bauer wrote: > >>> On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 18:33, Alexei Starovoitov > >>> <alexei.starovoi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> [...] > >>>>> +/* Linux packet pointers are either aligned to NET_IP_ALIGN (aka 2 > >>>>> bytes), > >>>>> + * or not aligned if the arch supports efficient unaligned access. > >>>>> + * > >>>>> + * Since the verifier ensures that eBPF packet accesses follow these > >>>>> rules, > >>>>> + * we can tell LLVM to emit code as if we always had a larger > >>>>> alignment. > >>>>> + * It will yell at us if we end up on a platform where this is not > >>>>> valid. > >>>>> + */ > >>>>> +typedef uint8_t *net_ptr __attribute__((align_value(8))); > >>>> > >>>> Wow. I didn't know about this attribute. > >>>> I wonder whether it can help Daniel's memcpy hack. > >>> > >>> Yes, I think so. > >> > >> Just for some more context [0]. I think the problem is a bit more complex > >> in > >> general. Generally, _any_ kind of pointer to some data (except for the > >> stack) > >> is currently treated as byte-by-byte copy from __builtin_memcpy() and other > >> similarly available __builtin_*() helpers on BPF backend since the backend > >> cannot make any assumptions about the data's alignment and whether > >> unaligned > >> access from the underlying arch is ok & efficient (the latter the verifier > >> does judge for us however). So it's definitely not just limited to > >> xdp->data. > >> There is also the issue that while access to any non-stack data can be > >> unaligned, access to the stack however cannot. I've discussed a while back > >> with Yonghong about potential solutions. One would be to add a small patch > >> to the BPF backend to enable __builtin_*() helpers to allow for unaligned > >> access which could then be opt-ed in e.g. via -mattr from llc for the case > >> when we know that the compiled program only runs on archs with efficient > >> unaligned access anyway. However, this still potentially breaks with the > >> BPF > >> stack for the case when objects are, for example, larger than size 8 but > >> with > >> a natural alignment smaller than 8 where __builtin_memcpy() would then > >> decide > >> to emit dw-typed load/stores. But for these cases could then be annotated > >> via > >> __aligned(8) on stack. So this is basically what we do right now as a > >> generic > >> workaround in Cilium [0], meaning, our own memcpy/memset with optimal > >> number > >> of instructions and __aligned(8) where needed; most of the time this > >> __aligned(8) > >> is not needed, so it's really just a few places, and we also have a cocci > >> scripts to catch these during development if needed. Anyway, real thing > >> would > >> be to allow the BPF stack for unaligned access as well and then BPF backend > >> could nicely solve this in a native way w/o any workarounds, but that is > >> tbd. > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Daniel > >> > >> [0] > >> https://github.com/cilium/cilium/blob/master/bpf/include/bpf/builtins.h > > > > Daniel, > > do you mind adding such memcpy to libbpf ? > > We could do that, yeah. Is there a way from BPF C code when compiling with > clang to > get to the actual underlying architecture (x86-64, arm64, ppc, etc) when > compiling > with `-target bpf` so that we can always fall back to __builtin_*() for those > where > verifier would bail out on unaligned access? Keep in mind the __bpf_memcpy() > and > __bpf_memzero() from [0] are fully compile time resolved and I did the > implementation > for sizes of 1,2,4,..., 96 where the latter is in two' increments, so no odd > buffer > sizes as we don't need them in our code. If someone does hit such an odd > case, then > I'm currently throwing a compilation error via __throw_build_bug(). Latter is > a nice > way to be able to guarantee that a switch/case or if condition is never hit > during > compilation time. It resolves to __builtin_trap() which is not implemented in > the > BPF backend and therefore yells to the developer when built into the code > (this has > a nice property which wouldn't work with BUILD_BUG_ON() for example). Anyway, > what > I'm saying is that either we'd need the full thing with all sizes or document > that > unsupported size would be hit when __builtin_trap() assertion is seen.
I think it would be fine to simply document it. Most structures have at least one 'int' and don't have 'packed', so they are multiple of 4 typically. Multiple of 2 limitation should be acceptable for most cases.