How My Custom Module on Linux 3.2.28 Can Make a Call to Print_Cpu_Info

How my custom module on linux 3.2.28 can make a call to print_cpu_info?

"print_cpu_info" is not exported symbol, so it can not be used by modules. However, you can use "kallsyms_lookup_name", which is exported, to get the address of "print_cpu_info" and execute the function call using a function pointer.

How can I convert XML into a Python object?

It's worth looking at lxml.objectify.

xml = """<main>
<object1 attr="name">content</object1>
<object1 attr="foo">contenbar</object1>
<test>me</test>
</main>"""

from lxml import objectify

main = objectify.fromstring(xml)
main.object1[0]             # content
main.object1[1]             # contenbar
main.object1[0].get("attr") # name
main.test                   # me

Or the other way around to build xml structures:

item = objectify.Element("item")
item.title = "Best of python"
item.price = 17.98
item.price.set("currency", "EUR")

order = objectify.Element("order")
order.append(item)
order.item.quantity = 3
order.price = sum(item.price * item.quantity for item in order.item)

import lxml.etree
print(lxml.etree.tostring(order, pretty_print=True))

Output:

<order>
  <item>
    <title>Best of python</title>
    <price currency="EUR">17.98</price>
    <quantity>3</quantity>
  </item>
  <price>53.94</price>
</order>

Make a system call to get list of processes

Why would you implement a system call for this? You don't want to add a syscall to the existing Linux API. This is the primary Linux interface to userspace and nobody touches syscalls except top kernel developers who know what they do.

If you want to get a list of processes and their parameters and real-time statuses, use /proc. Every directory that's an integer in there is an existing process ID and contains a bunch of useful dynamic files which ps, top and others use to print their output.

If you want to get a list of processes within the kernel (e.g. within a module), you should know that the processes are kept internally as a doubly linked list that starts with the init process (symbol init_task in the kernel). You should use macros defined in include/linux/sched.h to get processes. Here's an example:

#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/printk.h>
#include <linux/sched.h>

static int __init ex_init(void)
{
    struct task_struct *task;

    for_each_process(task)
        pr_info("%s [%d]\n", task->comm, task->pid);

    return 0;
}

static void __exit ex_fini(void)
{
}

module_init(ex_init);
module_exit(ex_fini);

This should be okay to gather information. However, don't change anything in there unless you really know what you're doing (which will require a bit more reading).

CPU usage of a kernel module

Sorry to disappoint, but there is no way to accomplish what you want -- not because Linux doesn't have the capability, but by definition:

A module can "plug-in" to the kernel of two general ways: Either by installing a callback (e.g. proc or sys file, device, etc), or starting a kernel thread. In your case, iptable_mangle plugs in by setting callbacks on iptables/netfilter. This means the module code is executed as part of the network stack (in ksoftirqd context, to be more accurate).

If this had been in a kernel thread context, Linux keeps statistics. But for callbacks, that is not the case. The thread which does end up executing the module code does a lot of other things, so just isolating your module code is impractical (unless, of course, you're in possession of the source, and then you can add timing statements very easily).

One partial solution would be to use the kernel ftrace mechanism - this allows for function call tracing in the kernel - it's unbelievably powerful, and can show you statistics as per particular functions. It's not exactly what you want, but it's as close as you'll get.

Calling times() in kernel space

If you want precisely measure times between some events in kernel (like context switching), you need some tracer, like SystemTap. From kernel module you may directly bind probes through various tracing and profiling subsystems like ftrace, perf or kprobes.

Here is an example which dumps message to kernel log when context is switched:

#include <linux/sched.h>
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/printk.h>
#include <linux/tracepoint.h>

#include <trace/events/sched.h>

...

void my_sched_switch_probe(void* ignore, struct task_struct* prev, struct task_struct* next) {
    printk("my_sched_switch_probe: %s -> %s at %lu\n", prev->comm, next->comm, 
        (unsigned long) sched_clock());
}

int cswtracer_init(void) {
    register_trace_sched_switch(my_sched_switch_probe, NULL);

    return 0;
}

void cswtracer_fini(void) {
    unregister_trace_sched_switch(my_sched_switch_probe, NULL);
}

module_init(cswtracer_init);
module_exit(cswtracer_fini);

NOTE: do not run it, it will slow your system dramatically.

So analyze name of processes in my_sched_switch_probe() and calculate difference between time when process entered CPU (next->comm == "myprocessname") and when it leaves CPU (prev->comm == "myprocessname"). That difference is the last time period process spent on CPU during.

Isolate Kernel Module to a Specific Core Using Cpuset

So I want the module to get executed in an isolated core.

and

actually isolate a specific core in our system and execute just one
specific process to that core

This is a working source code compiled and tested on a Debian box using kernel 3.16. I'll describe how to load and unload first and what the parameter passed means.

All sources can be found on github here...

https://github.com/harryjackson/doc/tree/master/linux/kernel/toy/toy

Build and load the module...

make
insmod toy param_cpu_id=2

To unload the module use

rmmod toy

I'm not using modprobe because it expects some configuration etc. The parameter we're passing to the toy kernel module is the CPU we want to isolate. None of the device operations that get called will run unless they're executing on that CPU.

Once the module is loaded you can find it here

/dev/toy

Simple operations like

cat /dev/toy

create events that the kernel module catches and produces some output. You can see the output using dmesg.

Source code...

#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/fs.h>
#include <linux/miscdevice.h>
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
MODULE_AUTHOR("Harry");
MODULE_DESCRIPTION("toy kernel module");
MODULE_VERSION("0.1"); 
#define  DEVICE_NAME "toy"
#define  CLASS_NAME  "toy"

static int    param_cpu_id;
module_param(param_cpu_id    , int, (S_IRUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IROTH));
MODULE_PARM_DESC(param_cpu_id, "CPU ID that operations run on");

//static void    bar(void *arg);
//static void    foo(void *cpu);
static int     toy_open(   struct inode *inodep, struct file *fp);
static ssize_t toy_read(   struct file *fp     , char *buffer, size_t len, loff_t * offset);
static ssize_t toy_write(  struct file *fp     , const char *buffer, size_t len, loff_t *);
static int     toy_release(struct inode *inodep, struct file *fp);

static struct file_operations toy_fops = {
  .owner = THIS_MODULE,
  .open = toy_open,
  .read = toy_read,
  .write = toy_write,
  .release = toy_release,
};

static struct miscdevice toy_device = {
  .minor = MISC_DYNAMIC_MINOR,
  .name = "toy",
  .fops = &toy_fops
};

//static int CPU_IDS[64] = {0};
static int toy_open(struct inode *inodep, struct file *filep) {
  int this_cpu = get_cpu();
  printk(KERN_INFO "open: called on CPU:%d\n", this_cpu);
  if(this_cpu == param_cpu_id) {
    printk(KERN_INFO "open: is on requested CPU: %d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  else {
    printk(KERN_INFO "open: not on requested CPU:%d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  put_cpu();
  return 0;
}
static ssize_t toy_read(struct file *filep, char *buffer, size_t len, loff_t *offset){
  int this_cpu = get_cpu();
  printk(KERN_INFO "read: called on CPU:%d\n", this_cpu);
  if(this_cpu == param_cpu_id) {
    printk(KERN_INFO "read: is on requested CPU: %d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  else {
    printk(KERN_INFO "read: not on requested CPU:%d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  put_cpu();
  return 0;
}
static ssize_t toy_write(struct file *filep, const char *buffer, size_t len, loff_t *offset){
  int this_cpu = get_cpu();
  printk(KERN_INFO "write called on CPU:%d\n", this_cpu);
  if(this_cpu == param_cpu_id) {
    printk(KERN_INFO "write: is on requested CPU: %d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  else {
    printk(KERN_INFO "write: not on requested CPU:%d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  put_cpu();
  return 0;
}
static int toy_release(struct inode *inodep, struct file *filep){
  int this_cpu = get_cpu();
  printk(KERN_INFO "release called on CPU:%d\n", this_cpu);
  if(this_cpu == param_cpu_id) {
    printk(KERN_INFO "release: is on requested CPU: %d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  else {
    printk(KERN_INFO "release: not on requested CPU:%d\n", smp_processor_id());
  }
  put_cpu();
  return 0;
}

static int __init toy_init(void) {
  int cpu_id;
  if(param_cpu_id < 0 || param_cpu_id > 4) {
    printk(KERN_INFO "toy: unable to load module without cpu parameter\n");
    return -1;
  }
  printk(KERN_INFO "toy: loading to device driver, param_cpu_id: %d\n", param_cpu_id);
  //preempt_disable(); // See notes below
  cpu_id = get_cpu();
  printk(KERN_INFO "toy init called and running on CPU: %d\n", cpu_id);
  misc_register(&toy_device);
  //preempt_enable(); // See notes below
  put_cpu();
  //smp_call_function_single(1,foo,(void *)(uintptr_t) 1,1);
  return 0;
}

static void __exit toy_exit(void) {
    misc_deregister(&toy_device);
    printk(KERN_INFO "toy exit called\n");
}

module_init(toy_init);
module_exit(toy_exit); 

The code above contains the two methods you asked for ie isolation of CPU and on init run on an isolated core.

On init get_cpu disables preemption ie anything that comes after it will not be preempted by the kernel and will run on one core. Note, this was done kernel using 3.16, your mileage may vary depending on your kernel version but I think these API's have been around a long time

This is the Makefile...

obj-m += toy.o

all:
    make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) modules

clean:
    make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) clean

Notes. get_cpu is declared in linux/smp.h as

#define get_cpu()   ({ preempt_disable(); smp_processor_id(); })
#define put_cpu()   preempt_enable()

so you don't actually need to call preempt_disable before calling get_cpu.
The get_cpu call is a wrapper around the following sequence of calls...

preempt_count_inc();
barrier();

and put_cpu is really doing this...

barrier();
if (unlikely(preempt_count_dec_and_test())) {
  __preempt_schedule();
}   

You can get as fancy as you like using the above. Almost all of this was taken from the following sources..

Google for... smp_call_function_single

Linux Kernel Development, book by Robert Love.

http://derekmolloy.ie/writing-a-linux-kernel-module-part-2-a-character-device/

https://github.com/vsinitsyn/reverse/blob/master/reverse.c

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