Tutorial: Tracing01 - monitor xdp tracepoint

In this lesson we will show how to create and load eBPF program that hooks on xdp:exception tracepoint and get its values to user space stats application.

Table of Contents

• XDP tracepoints
  • Tracepoint program section
  • Tracepoint arguments
  • Tracepoint attaching
• HASH map
• Assignments
  • Assignment 1: Setting up your test lab
  • Assignment 2: Load tracepoint monitor program

XDP tracepoints

The eBPF programs can be attached also to tracepoints. There are several tracepoints related to the xdp tracepoint subsystem:

ls /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/xdp/
xdp_cpumap_enqueue
xdp_cpumap_kthread
xdp_devmap_xmit
xdp_exception
xdp_redirect
xdp_redirect_err
xdp_redirect_map
xdp_redirect_map_err

Tracepoint program section

The bpf library expects the tracepoint eBPF program to be stored in a section with following name:

tracepoint/<sys>/<tracepoint>

where <sys> is the tracepoint subsystem and <tracepoint> is the tracepoint name, which can be done with following construct:

SEC("tracepoint/xdp/xdp_exception")
int trace_xdp_exception(struct xdp_exception_ctx *ctx)

Tracepoint arguments

There’s single program pointer argument which points to the structure, that defines the tracepoint fields.

Like for xdp:xdp_exception tracepoint:

struct xdp_exception_ctx {
        __u64 __pad;      // First 8 bytes are not accessible by bpf code
        __s32 prog_id;    //      offset:8;  size:4; signed:1;
        __u32 act;        //      offset:12; size:4; signed:0;
        __s32 ifindex;    //      offset:16; size:4; signed:1;
};

int trace_xdp_exception(struct xdp_exception_ctx *ctx)

This struct is exported in tracepoint format file:

# cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/xdp/xdp_exception/format
...
        field:unsigned short common_type;       offset:0;       size:2; signed:0;
        field:unsigned char common_flags;       offset:2;       size:1; signed:0;
        field:unsigned char common_preempt_count;       offset:3;       size:1; signed:0;
        field:int common_pid;   offset:4;       size:4; signed:1;

        field:int prog_id;      offset:8;       size:4; signed:1;
        field:u32 act;  offset:12;      size:4; signed:0;
        field:int ifindex;      offset:16;      size:4; signed:1;
...

Tracepoint attaching

To load a tracepoint program for this example we use following bpf library helper functions:

bpf_object__open_file(cfg->filename, NULL);

bpf_object__load(obj);

To attach the program to the tracepoint we need to create a tracepoint perf event and attach the eBPF program to it, using its file descriptor. Under the hood this function sets up the PERF_EVENT_IOC_SET_BPF ioctl call:

bpf_program__attach_tracepoint(prog, "xdp", "xdp_exception");

Please check trace_load_and_stats.c load_bpf_and_trace_attach function for all the details.

HASH map

This example is using PERCPU HASH map, that stores number of aborted packets for interface

struct {
    __uint(type, BPF_MAP_TYPE_PERCPU_HASH);
    __type(key, __s32);
    __type(value, __u64);
    __uint(max_entries, 10);
} xdp_stats_map SEC(".maps");

The interface is similar to the ARRAY map except that we need to specifically create new element in the hash if it does not exist:

/* Lookup in kernel BPF-side returns pointer to actual data. */
valp = bpf_map_lookup_elem(&xdp_stats_map, &key);

/* If there's no record for interface, we need to create one,
 * with number of packets == 1
 */
if (!valp) {
	__u64 one = 1;
	return bpf_map_update_elem(&xdp_stats_map, &key, &one, 0) ? 1 : 0;
}

(*valp)++;

Please check trace_prog_kern.c for the full code.

Assignments

Assignment 1: Setting up your test lab

In this lesson we will use the setup of the previous lesson: Basic02 - loading a program by name https://github.com/xdp-project/xdp-tutorial/tree/master/basic02-prog-by-name#assignment-2-add-xdp_abort-program

and load XDP program from xdp_prog_kern.o that will abort every incoming packet:

SEC("xdp_abort")
int xdp_drop_func(struct xdp_md *ctx)
{
        return XDP_ABORTED;
}

with xdp-loader: Assignment 2: Add xdp_abort program https://github.com/xdp-project/xdp-tutorial/tree/master/basic02-prog-by-name#assignment-2-add-xdp_abort-program

Setup the environment:

$ sudo ../testenv/testenv.sh setup --name veth-basic02

Load the XDP program, that produces aborted packets:

$ sudo xdp-loader load veth-basic02 xdp_prog_kern.o -n xdp_drop_func

and generate some packets:

$ sudo ../testenv/testenv.sh enter --name veth-basic02
# ping  fc00:dead:cafe:1::1
PING fc00:dead:cafe:1::1(fc00:dead:cafe:1::1) 56 data bytes

Assignment 2: Load tracepoint monitor program

Now when you run the trace_load_and_stats application it will load and attach the tracepoint eBPF program and display number of aborted packets per interface:

# ./trace_load_and_stats
Success: Loaded BPF-object(trace_prog_kern.o)

Collecting stats from BPF map
 - BPF map (bpf_map_type:1) id:46 name:xdp_stats_map key_size:4 value_size:4 max_entries:10

veth-basic02 (2)
veth-basic02 (4)
veth-basic02 (6)
...