Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 0/7] QEMU binary instrumentation prototype

[Pavel Dovgalyuk]

Peter, what about this one?

Pavel Dovgalyuk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pavel Dovgalyuk [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2018 2:56 PM
> To: 'Peter Maydell'; 'Pavel Dovgalyuk'
> Cc: 'QEMU Developers'; address@hidden; 'Paolo Bonzini'; 'Lluís Vilanova'
> Subject: RE: [RFC PATCH v2 0/7] QEMU binary instrumentation prototype
> 
> > From: Peter Maydell [mailto:address@hidden
> >
> > This series doesn't seem to add anything to Documentation/ that
> > describes the API we make available to plugins. I'm a lot more
> > interested in reviewing the API that will be used by plugins
> > than I am in the implementation at this stage. Can you provide
> > a description/documentation of the API for review, please?
> 
> 
> Here is the draft:
> 
> Introduction
> ============
> 
> This document describes an API for creating the QEMU
> instrumentation plugins.
> 
> It is based on the following prior sources:
>  - KVM Forum 2017 talk "Instrumenting, Introspection, and Debugging with QEMU"
>    https://www.linux-kvm.org/images/3/3d/Introspect.pdf
>  - Discussion on Lluis Vilanova instrumentation patch series
>    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-09/msg03357.html
> 
> The aim of the instrumentation is implementing different runtime
> tracers that can track the executed instructions, memory and
> hardware operations.
> 
> Instrumenting the code
> ======================
> 
> Instrumentation subsystem exploits TCG helper mechanism to embed
> callbacks into the translation blocks. These callbacks may be inserted
> before the specific instructions, when the plugins require such filtering.
> 
> Translator uses two functions for embedding the callbacks:
>  - first function checks whether the current instruction should be
>    instrumented
>  - second function embeds the callback for executing the plugin-specific
>    code before that instruction
> 
> The similar method may be used for memory access instrumentation.
> 
> QEMU->Plugin API
> ================
> 
> Instrumentation layer passes the requests from the translator
> to the dynamically loaded plugins. Every plugin may provide
> the following functions to perform the instrumentation:
> 
>  1. bool plugin_init(const char *args);
>     Initialization function. May return false if the plugin
>     can't work in the current environment.
> 
>  2. bool plugin_needs_before_insn(uint64_t pc, void *cpu);
>     Returns true if the plugin needs to instrument the current instruction.
>     It may use the address (pc) for making the decision or the guest
>     CPU state (cpu), which can be passed back to QEMU core API
>     (e.g., for reading the guest memory).
>     This function is called at both translation and execution phases.
> 
>  3. void plugin_before_insn(uint64_t pc, void *cpu);
>     If the previous function returned true for some instruction,
>     then this function will be called. This process is repeated before
>     every execution of the instruction, if it was instrumented.
> 
> The similar pair of functions will also be added for the memory
> operations.
> 
> Plugin->QEMU API
> ================
> 
> QEMU core exports some functions to let the plugins introspect the guest
> or perform some interaction with other QEMU services (e.g., logging).
> API doesn't contain any data structures, because their memory layout depend
> on the compilation settings.
> 
> QEMU exports the following functions that may be called from the plugins:
> 
>  1. void qemulib_log(const char *fmt, ...);
>     Wrapper for qemu_log.
> 
>  2. int qemulib_read_memory(void *cpu, uint64_t addr, uint8_t *buf, int len);
>     Reads guest memory into the buffer. Wrapper for cpu_memory_rw_debug.
> 
>  3. int qemulib_read_register(void *cpu, uint8_t *mem_buf, int reg);
>     Uses target gdb interface for accessing the guest registers.
>     'reg' is the id of the desired register as it is coded by gdb.
> 
> There also should be a function for flushing the translated blocks to
> ensure that the instrumentation will occur in the case of changing
> the internal plugin state.
>