RaceHound¶

RaceHound can be used to detect data races in the Linux kernel on x86.

Kernel 3.14 or newer is required. Kprobes, kallsyms and debugfs support are
also needed in the kernel.

The ideas implemented here are similar to how DataCollider tool operates
on MS Windows.

How it works¶

The kernel part of RaceHound (racehound.ko module) monitors the instructions in the kernel code in runtime. It operates as follows:

1. Place software breakpoints (Kprobes, actually) at the locations specified by the user.

2. When a software breakpoint hits, check if the corresponding instruction is about to access memory. Determine the address and the size of that memory area.

3. Save the contents of that area (or at least a part of it).

4. Place a hardware breakpoint on that memory area to detect writes (if the instruction reads from it) or both reads and writes (if the instruction writes to it).

5. Make a delay. The length of the delay is configurable. If some code tried to access that memory area during the delay, the hardware
breakpoint might have detected it.

6. Disarm the hardware breakpoint.

7. Just in case, check if the contents of that memory area have changed during the delay. Might help detect races that were not caught above.

8. Let the execution continue as usual.

The found races are reported to the system log and to racehound/events file in debugfs.

Build prerequisites¶

• cmake 2.8.10 or newer.
• Everything that is needed to build kernel modules (kernel development files, etc.).
• GCC C compiler and C++ compiler with C++11 support (GCC 4.9 or newer is preferable).
• (only if you want to build "ma_lines" plugin) GCC development files needed to build plugins.
• elfutils, libelf, libdw and their development files.

Build¶

$ mkdir racehound.build
  $ cd racehound.build
  $ cmake path_to_racehound_sources
  $ make

To install RaceHound, you can now execute "make install" as root.

Note that RaceHound is installed for the current kernel only. If you update
or otherwise change the kernel, please rebuild RaceHound and install it
again.

Self-tests (optional)¶

To build the tests provided with RaceHound, run "make build_tests" in the
directory where RaceHound was built. Then you can run "ctest" as root there
to run all the tests.

The tests check the basic functionality of RaceHound.

Usage¶

It is assumed here that debugfs is available and mounted to /sys/kernel/debug.

Scenario 1: monitoring a set of instructions¶

1. The user can tell the kernel part of RaceHound to monitor the particular instructions in the kernel code. The locations of these instructions should be written to /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints in the following format:

  [<module_name>:]{init|core}+0xoffset[,delay=<value>]

If <module_name> is not specified, the kernel or a built-in module is assumed.

"init" and "core" are the areas containing the code of the kernel or a module in memory. See module_init and module_core in struct module. Dealing with the ELF sections in the kernel has its difficulties, same for the addresses and sizes of the functions, so RaceHound uses "init" and "core" areas instead.

"delay" can be used to set the length of the delay for the given monitored instruction when a software breakpoint hits. If it is not specified, "delay" parameter of "racehound" kernel module will be used (or "delay_in_atomic" in atomic context, if set). The value is in milliseconds.

lines2insns tool from this project can help prepare the location strings in the correct format.

Suppose you would like to monitor the memory accesses corresponding to the lines 82 and 84 in something.c source file of test_module.ko. The module
should be built with debug info. Then you can do the following.

$ echo "something.c:82" | lines2insns test_module.ko
  test_module:core+0x22f

$ echo "something.c:84" | lines2insns test_module.ko
  test_module:core+0x251

If you are interested, say, only in writes at something.c:84, you can specify this as well:

$ echo "something.c:84:write" | lines2insns test_module.ko
  test_module:core+0x251

If you know the ELF sections and the offsets there for the instructions of interest, lines2insns can convert that to the proper format too:
$ echo "test_module:.text+0x251" | lines2insns --section-to-area test_module.ko
test_common_target:core+0x251

$ echo "test_module:.exit.text+0x1" | lines2insns --section-to-area test_module.ko
  test_common_target:core+0x335

$ echo "test_module:.init.text+0xdd" | lines2insns --section-to-area test_module.ko
  test_common_target:init+0xdd

See lines2insns --help for more details.

So, suppose you would like to monitor the instructions at the following locations in test_module:
test_module:core+0x22f
test_module:core+0x251
...as well as one location in the kernel proper or in a built-in module:
core+0x77654

2. Load racehound.ko if it is not loaded yet.

insmod /usr/local/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/misc/racehound.ko [delay=...]

You can optionally specify how long to delay execution of the instructions to check for the conflicting memory accesses. "delay" parameter of "racehound" kernel module can be used for that. The value is in milliseconds. The default is about 5000/HZ (5 jiffies).

If you would like to use a different delay for atomic context, please specify it in "delay_in_atomic" parameter.

3. Instruct RaceHound to monitor the given instructions (as root).

echo "test_module:core+0x22f" > /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints
  echo "test_module:core+0x251" > /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints
  echo "core+0x77654,delay=50" > /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints

Note that the execution of the instruction at "core+0x77654" will be delayed by 50 milliseconds ("delay=50") no matter which global settings for delays RaceHound has.

Reading /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints will show the list of the instructions to be monitored.

Note that it is no longer required to load RaceHound before the analyzed module(s).

As soon as RaceHound receives the list of instructions to monitor, it will check if the corresponding components of the kernel are loaded. If they are,
the monitoring will start immediately. If a module is not loaded yet, RaceHound will wait for it to load and will process it after that.

Different kernel components can be monitored simultaneously.

To stop monitoring an instruction, you can write the same string as before to /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints but with ''-'' prepended. Example:

echo "-core+0x77654" > /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints

4. Make the analyzed kernel code work.

5. If RaceHound detects a race, it will output something like this to the system log (see dmesg):

[rh] Detected a data race on the memory block at ffffffffa09b936c
  between the instruction at test_module:core+0x22f (comm: "sh")
  and the instruction right before my_func+0x18/0x20 [test_module] (comm: "sh").

or

[rh] Detected a data race on the memory block at ffffffffa09b936c
  that is about to be accessed by the instruction at
  test_module:core+0x251 (comm: "sh"):
  the memory block was modified during the delay.

If the race is detected only because the memory area has been modified during the delay, RaceHound, obviously, has no idea which code has done that modification. On the other hand, the hardware breakpoints report the both involved parties.

6. If "test_module" is built with debug info, you can use addr2line or a similar tool to find the source lines for the conflicting access (my_func+0x18/0x20 in the example above).

7. Unload "racehound" module when it is no longer needed. If the analyzed kernel components are still loaded then, RaceHound will automatically "detach" from them first.

Notes and tips

• If the kernel is built with CONFIG_PREEMPT=y, it may help make the system more responsive when using RaceHound. Especially, - if you use the delays in seconds or longer.

• There are only 4 hardware breakpoints available on an x86 CPU, so monitoring too many instructions that execute often may be pointless. The exact values
  of "too many" and "often" may vary, of course.

• If the "hot code paths" are constantly monitored, the performance overhead may become significant as well.

• If you suspect two instructions to race against each other, it is usually better to monitor only one of them. The reports about the races might be less useful otherwise: the accesses from RaceHound itself may be listed there.

• If you try to write a location to monitor to /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/breakpoints and it fails, check the system log (dmesg), it may provide more info.

On x86-64, adding a location to monitor may also fail if the kernel does not have the following fix:
"kprobes/x86: Return correct length in __copy_instruction()"
(commit c80e5c0c23ce2282476fdc64c4b5e3d3a40723fd in the mainline)

Scenario 2: sweeping through the code¶

The idea is as follows. Suppose we have a list of the instructions from the given portion of the code, say, part of a module or of the kernel. The list may be quite long and monitoring all these instructions at the same time can be a bad idea (performance overhead, etc.).

Note that "ma_lines" plugin for GCC 4.9+ can be used to get the list of the locations in the source code where memory accesses may happen (except the code written in assembly). lines2insns will translate it to the list of locations in the binary code. See ma_lines/Readme.txt.

The kernel part of RaceHound provides info about which software breakpoints have been hit and which races have been found. It is available via /sys/kernel/debug/racehound/events file. Poll/select can be used for that file to wait till the events are available there. The events can then be read, one per line.

The format for the "BP hit" events is the same as used for racehound/breakpoints file, see above.

For the found races, the corresponding event lines are prefixed with "[race]".

An example that demonstrates the usage of this API is also provided:
https://github.com/winnukem/racehound/blob/master/examples/events.py

A user-space application may use the information about the events to automatically start and stop monitoring the instructions from the list according to some policy. This should allow to keep overhead at the acceptable level.

An example of such application is provided here:
https://github.com/winnukem/racehound/blob/master/examples/check_races.py

Note that both events.py and check_races.py need Python 3.4 or newer.