[PATCH -tip 0/6 V4] tracing: kprobe-based event tracer

[Avi Kivity]

Vegard Nossum wrote:
> For the record, kmemcheck requirements for an instruction decoder are these:
>
> For any instruction with memory operands, we need to know which are
> the operands (so for movl %eax, (%ebx) we need to combine the
> instruction with a struct pt_regs to get the actual address
> dereferenced, i.e. the contents of %ebx), and their sizes (for movzbl,
> the source operand is 8 bits, destination operand is 32 bits). For
> things like movsb, we need to be able to get both %esi and %edi.
>
>   

The kvm emulator does all of this.

> mmiotrace additionally needs to know what the actual values
> read/written were, for instructions that read/write to memory (again,
> combined with a struct pt_regs).
>   

And this.

> Maybe this doesn't really say much, since this is what a generic
> instruction decoder would be able to do anyway. But kmemcheck and
> mmiotrace both have very special-purpose decoders. I don't really know
> what other decoders look like, but what I would wish for is this: Some
> macros for iterating the operands, where each operand has a type (e.g.
> input (for reads), output (for writes), target (for jumps), immediate
> address, immediate value, etc.), a size (in bits), and a way to
> evaluate the operand. So eval(op, regs) for op=%eax, it will return
> regs->eax; for op=4(%eax), it will return regs->eax + 4; for op=4 it
> will return 4, etc.
>   

You can do something like this by executing the instruction and 
observing what memory is touches through the callbacks.

-- 
I have a truly marvellous patch that fixes the bug which this
signature is too narrow to contain.