iovisor / iovisor/bcc

User-space stack backtrace

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Dominant language
C
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Description

This was kind of discussed in [issue #1070](https://github.com/iovisor/bcc/issues/1070) but I'm having trouble getting user-space backtraces from 32-bit ARM binaries. If I take a simple test application I get proper user space callchains for the 64-bit binary but not the 32-bit binary. For the 32-bit binary I just get one instruction pointer/program counter so it seems like the in-kernel unwinder has trouble. The unwind information is stored a bit differently in 32-bit ARM binaries so I wonder if that's the problem. Are there any workarounds? @4ast mentioned possibly reading some of the stack memory and unwinding in userspace like perf allows you to do. Are there any examples of that in bcc?

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Research direction

No source files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reading issue #1070 and comparing the reported 64-bit and 32-bit ARM backtrace behavior; done would mean demonstrating a reliable multi-frame user-space backtrace or documenting a verified workaround and relevant BCC example.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, linux
Domain
observability-sre, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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