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coredump: add tracepoint for coredump events
Coredump is a generally useful and interesting event in the lifetime of a process. Add a tracepoint so it can be monitored through the standard kernel tracing infrastructure. BPF-based crash monitoring is an advanced approach that allows real-time crash interception: by attaching a BPF program at this point, tools can use bpf_get_stack() with BPF_F_USER_STACK to capture the user-space stack trace at the exact moment of the crash, before the process is fully terminated, without waiting for a coredump file to be written and parsed. However, there is currently no stable kernel API for this use case. Existing tools rely on attaching fentry probes to do_coredump(), which is an internal function whose signature changes across kernel versions, breaking these tools. Add a stable tracepoint that fires at the beginning of do_coredump(), providing BPF programs a reliable attachment point. At tracepoint time, the crashing process context is still live, so BPF programs can call bpf_get_stack() with BPF_F_USER_STACK to extract the user-space backtrace. The tracepoint records: - sig: signal number that triggered the coredump - comm: process name Example output: $ echo 1 > /sys/kernel/tracing/events/coredump/coredump/enable $ sleep 999 & $ kill -SEGV $! $ cat /sys/kernel/tracing/trace # TASK-PID CPU# ||||| TIMESTAMP FUNCTION # | | | ||||| | | sleep-634 [036] ..... 145.222206: coredump: sig=11 comm=sleep Suggested-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323-coredump_tracepoint-v2-1-afced083b38d@debian.org Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
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fs/coredump.c

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#include <trace/events/sched.h>
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#define CREATE_TRACE_POINTS
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#include <trace/events/coredump.h>
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static bool dump_vma_snapshot(struct coredump_params *cprm);
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static void free_vma_snapshot(struct coredump_params *cprm);
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@@ -1090,6 +1093,8 @@ static inline bool coredump_skip(const struct coredump_params *cprm,
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static void do_coredump(struct core_name *cn, struct coredump_params *cprm,
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size_t **argv, int *argc, const struct linux_binfmt *binfmt)
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{
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trace_coredump(cprm->siginfo->si_signo);
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if (!coredump_parse(cn, cprm, argv, argc)) {
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coredump_report_failure("format_corename failed, aborting core");
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return;

include/trace/events/coredump.h

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/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
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/*
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* Copyright (c) 2026 Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates.
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* Copyright (c) 2026 Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
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*/
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#undef TRACE_SYSTEM
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#define TRACE_SYSTEM coredump
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#if !defined(_TRACE_COREDUMP_H) || defined(TRACE_HEADER_MULTI_READ)
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#define _TRACE_COREDUMP_H
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#include <linux/sched.h>
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#include <linux/tracepoint.h>
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/**
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* coredump - called when a coredump starts
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* @sig: signal number that triggered the coredump
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*
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* This tracepoint fires at the beginning of a coredump attempt,
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* providing a stable interface for monitoring coredump events.
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*/
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TRACE_EVENT(coredump,
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TP_PROTO(int sig),
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TP_ARGS(sig),
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TP_STRUCT__entry(
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__field(int, sig)
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__array(char, comm, TASK_COMM_LEN)
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),
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TP_fast_assign(
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__entry->sig = sig;
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memcpy(__entry->comm, current->comm, TASK_COMM_LEN);
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),
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TP_printk("sig=%d comm=%s",
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__entry->sig, __entry->comm)
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);
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#endif /* _TRACE_COREDUMP_H */
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/* This part must be outside protection */
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#include <trace/define_trace.h>

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