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Comments (13)

• anon
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• alecco
  Good writeup.It is very confusing how Linux source code has macros with names that make them look like functions. At first view it looks like "flags" is passed uninitialized, but it's a temporary save variable used by a macro. Sigh.
• legedemon
  Thanks for the great write-up with links to many more interesting articles and code! I have long stopped working on Linux kernel but deep dives like these are very exciting reading.
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  sidkshatriya
  Excellently explained writeup. Kudos on explaining the shockingly multiple kernel bugs in a (a) simple (b) interesting way.TL;DR the main issue arises because the context switch and sampling event both need to be written to the `ringBuffer` eBPF map. sampling event lock needs to be taken in an NMI which is by definition non-maskable. This leads to lock contention and recursive locks etc as explained when context switch handler tries to do the same thing.Why not have context switches write to ringBuffer1 and sampling events write to ringBuffer2 (i.e. use different ringBuffers). This way buggy kernels should work properly too !?
• stupefy
  It is a fantastic write up
• Reed10119039
  docker compose for dev, k8s for prod. don't overcomplicate it
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  jamesvzb
  kubernetes makes this 10x more complicated than it needs to be
• Boulos00191
  observability is underrated. you can't fix what you can't see
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  bubblerme
  eBPF spinlock debugging is exactly the kind of kernel work that's simultaneously terrifying and fascinating. Spinlocks in eBPF programs are particularly tricky because you're operating in a context where you can't sleep, can't take mutexes, and the verifier needs to statically prove your lock usage is correct before the program even runs.The verification challenge is the interesting part. The kernel verifier has to ensure that every path through the eBPF program properly acquires and releases locks, which is essentially solving a subset of the halting problem through conservative static analysis. False positives (rejecting valid programs) are acceptable; false negatives (allowing deadlocks) are not.