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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
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Merge tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-tracegrafted
Pull tracing fixes from Steven Rostedt: - Fix error output of boot instance creation failure Currently if a boot instance creation fails, instead of printing out the name of the instance that failed, it prints "(null)". That is because it prints "cur_str" that had already been processed by strsep(). Print the saved name instead. While at it, print the error code of the failure. - Fix use-after-free for same named historgrams Histograms can be named so that they can be used in multiple events. But if the named histogram has a variable attached, the second event that uses the named histogram which duplicates it and needs to free the original after duplication leaves the old variable in place and still visible. If another histogram uses than variable, it will use the stale one which will try to reference the freed duplicate histogram and crash the kernel. Free the duplicate variables along with the duplicated histogram data. - Check return value of kthread_run() in event self test The events self tests uses a kthread for testing but does not check if it succeeded in creating a kthread. If the kthread creation were to fail, the code will still try to call kthread_stop() on the error returned. - Fix race between reading trace_pipe and updating subbuffer size If a user is reading the trace_pipe file at the same time they update the ring buffer sub-buffer size, can cause the trace_pipe read to read stale data. Add trace_access_lock() around updating the ring buffer sub-buffer size. - Fix eventfs_inode on failure path in creation of the events directory In the creation of the "events" directory, if after allocating the eventfs_inode a failure is detected, it calls cleanup_ei() which calls free_ei(). The free_ei() will test if eventfs_inode being freed has no children. It is a bug if it does. But on the failure case of the creation of the "events" directory, the children lists have not yet been initialized and the free will trigger a warning because list_empty() on an uninitialized list returns false. Move the initialization into init_ei() where it makes more sense and makes sure that a created eventfs_inode has its lists initialized upon creation. - Check return value of kthread_run() in ftrace direct sample code The sample code that shows how to use the ftrace direct calls does not test the return of kthread_run() to see if it succeeds. Return a failure if the kthread_run() doesn't succeed. - Clear user events state on fork in case of alloc failure On fork, the child gets a pointer to the parent's user events state. It makes a copy of it then updates the child's pointer to it. But if the allocation fails, the duplication function leaves the child with a pointer to its parent's descriptor. When the child cleans up its data, it will free the parent's descriptor while the parent is still using it. In the duplication function, set the child's user_event_mm to NULL before testing if the allocation succeeded, and when it exits it will not free the parent's descriptor. - Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap simple_ring_buffer_swap_reader_page() starts with retry set to 8 and post-decrements it only after a failed link replacement. On the final attempt, a successful replacement leaves retry at zero, while a failed replacement leaves it at -1. But the check for success expects the retry value to be non-zero and exits with an error on zero. This is the opposite result. Fix it. - Fail nicely when the remote swap_reader_page() returns an error Currently, if the swap_reader_page() of a remote buffer fails, it triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE() and continues normally. Instead, have it exit with an error and a pr_warn() print instead of a full WARNING. * tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace: ring-buffer: Stop remote reader update when page swap fails tracing: Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap tracing/user_events: Clear copied tracing state before fork duplication samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-multi-modify samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-modify eventfs: Initialize ei->children and ei->list in init_ei() tracing: Fix use-after-free in trace_pipe read on sub-buffer order change tracing: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop() tracing: Fix use-after-free with same-name named triggers tracing: Fix logged instance name on creation failure
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+================
+Kernel Connector
+================
+
+Kernel connector - new netlink based userspace <-> kernel space easy
+to use communication module.
+
+The Connector driver makes it easy to connect various agents using a
+netlink based network. One must register a callback and an identifier.
+When the driver receives a special netlink message with the appropriate
+identifier, the appropriate callback will be called.
+
+From the userspace point of view it's quite straightforward:
+
+ - socket();
+ - bind();
+ - send();
+ - recv();
+
+But if kernelspace wants to use the full power of such connections, the
+driver writer must create special sockets, must know about struct sk_buff
+handling, etc... The Connector driver allows any kernelspace agents to use
+netlink based networking for inter-process communication in a significantly
+easier way::
+
+ int cn_add_callback(const struct cb_id *id, char *name, void (*callback) (struct cn_msg *, struct netlink_skb_parms *));
+ void cn_netlink_send_mult(struct cn_msg *msg, u16 len, u32 portid, u32 __group, int gfp_mask);
+ void cn_netlink_send(struct cn_msg *msg, u32 portid, u32 __group, int gfp_mask);
+
+ struct cb_id
+ {
+ __u32 idx;
+ __u32 val;
+ };
+
+idx and val are unique identifiers which must be registered in the
+connector.h header for in-kernel usage. `void (*callback) (void *)` is a
+callback function which will be called when a message with above idx.val
+is received by the connector core. The argument for that function must
+be dereferenced to `struct cn_msg *`::
+
+ struct cn_msg
+ {
+ struct cb_id id;
+
+ __u32 seq;
+ __u32 ack;
+
+ __u16 len; /* Length of the following data */
+ __u16 flags;
+ __u8 data[0];
+ };
+
+Connector interfaces
+====================
+
+ .. kernel-doc:: include/linux/connector.h
+
+ Note:
+ When registering new callback user, connector core assigns
+ netlink group to the user which is equal to its id.idx.
+
+Protocol description
+====================
+
+The current framework offers a transport layer with fixed headers. The
+recommended protocol which uses such a header is as following:
+
+msg->seq and msg->ack are used to determine message genealogy. When
+someone sends a message, they use a locally unique sequence and random
+acknowledge number. The sequence number may be copied into
+nlmsghdr->nlmsg_seq too.
+
+The sequence number is incremented with each message sent.
+
+If you expect a reply to the message, then the sequence number in the
+received message MUST be the same as in the original message, and the
+acknowledge number MUST be the same + 1.
+
+If we receive a message and its sequence number is not equal to one we
+are expecting, then it is a new message. If we receive a message and
+its sequence number is the same as one we are expecting, but its
+acknowledge is not equal to the sequence number in the original
+message + 1, then it is a new message.
+
+Obviously, the protocol header contains the above id.
+
+The connector allows event notification in the following form: kernel
+driver or userspace process can ask connector to notify it when
+selected ids will be turned on or off (registered or unregistered its
+callback). It is done by sending a special command to the connector
+driver (it also registers itself with id={-1, -1}).
+
+As example of this usage can be found in the cn_test.c module which
+uses the connector to request notification and to send messages.
+
+Reliability
+===========
+
+Netlink itself is not a reliable protocol. That means that messages can
+be lost due to memory pressure or process' receiving queue overflowed,
+so caller is warned that it must be prepared. That is why the struct
+cn_msg [main connector's message header] contains u32 seq and u32 ack
+fields.
+
+Userspace usage
+===============
+
+2.6.14 has a new netlink socket implementation, which by default does not
+allow people to send data to netlink groups other than 1.
+So, if you wish to use a netlink socket (for example using connector)
+with a different group number, the userspace application must subscribe to
+that group first. It can be achieved by the following pseudocode::
+
+ s = socket(PF_NETLINK, SOCK_DGRAM, NETLINK_CONNECTOR);
+
+ l_local.nl_family = AF_NETLINK;
+ l_local.nl_groups = 12345;
+ l_local.nl_pid = 0;
+
+ if (bind(s, (struct sockaddr *)&l_local, sizeof(struct sockaddr_nl)) == -1) {
+ perror("bind");
+ close(s);
+ return -1;
+ }
+
+ {
+ int on = l_local.nl_groups;
+ setsockopt(s, 270, 1, &on, sizeof(on));
+ }
+
+Where 270 above is SOL_NETLINK, and 1 is a NETLINK_ADD_MEMBERSHIP socket
+option. To drop a multicast subscription, one should call the above socket
+option with the NETLINK_DROP_MEMBERSHIP parameter which is defined as 0.
+
+2.6.14 netlink code only allows to select a group which is less or equal to
+the maximum group number, which is used at netlink_kernel_create() time.
+In case of connector it is CN_NETLINK_USERS + 0xf, so if you want to use
+group number 12345, you must increment CN_NETLINK_USERS to that number.
+Additional 0xf numbers are allocated to be used by non-in-kernel users.
+
+Due to this limitation, group 0xffffffff does not work now, so one can
+not use add/remove connector's group notifications, but as far as I know,
+only cn_test.c test module used it.
+
+Some work in netlink area is still being done, so things can be changed in
+2.6.15 timeframe, if it will happen, documentation will be updated for that
+kernel.
+
+Code samples
+============
+
+Sample code for a connector test module and user space can be found
+in samples/connector/. To build this code, enable CONFIG_CONNECTOR
+and CONFIG_SAMPLES.