Add support of gcc BPF backend

[brianwitte]

Hey, Alan.

Thanks for all the work on bpftune (and your informative talks on BTF :smile: ).

I wanted to begin the process of porting bpftune to support the BPF backend for gcc.

I started with the Makefile(s).

On my fork, you can:

GCC_BPF=bpf-gcc make && sudo make install

It compiles successfully (and throws warnings due to ignoring unkown clang #pragmas).

Then you can run bpftune in legacy mode:

$ sudo bpftune -S     
bpftune: bpftune works in legacy mode
bpftune: bpftune supports per-netns policy (via netns cookie)

Below are the specifications for the machine I am testing on. I use upstream Debian for my work as much as possible:

$ bpf-gcc --version 
bpf-gcc (14.1.0-1+2) 14.1.0
Copyright (C) 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

$ bpftool version                       
bpftool v7.4.0
using libbpf v1.4
features:

$ ll /usr/lib64/ | sudo grep libbpf.so                       
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   11 Jun  6 13:33 libbpf.so -> libbpf.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   15 Jun  6 13:33 libbpf.so.1 -> libbpf.so.1.4.3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.6M Jun  6 13:33 libbpf.so.1.4.3

$ uname -m && lsb_release -d && uname -r
x86_64
No LSB modules are available.
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid
6.7.12-amd64

I was wondering how I could help bpftune support the gcc backend for BPF and get bpftune to work "fully" out of the box with it.

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[brianwitte]

These appear to be what the gcc bpf backend is throwing warnings about:

bpf-gcc -g -O2 -g -fno-stack-protector -Wall -D__TARGET_ARCH_x86 -gbtf -mcpu=v3 -Wno-error=attributes -Wno-error=address-of-packed-member -Wno-compare-distinct-pointer-types -I../include -I/usr/include -I/usr/include/libnl3 -I../include/uapi -c tcp_buffer_tuner.bpf.c \
        -o tcp_buffer_tuner.bpf.o
In file included from ../include/bpftune/bpftune.bpf.h:36,
                 from tcp_buffer_tuner.bpf.c:20:
../include/bpftune/vmlinux_x86_64.h:5: warning: ignoring ‘#pragma clang attribute’ [-Wunknown-pragmas]
    5 | #pragma clang attribute push (__attribute__((preserve_access_index)), apply_to = record)
../include/bpftune/vmlinux_x86_64.h:121955: warning: ignoring ‘#pragma clang attribute’ [-Wunknown-pragmas]
121955 | #pragma clang attribute pop
]

Here are the files grepped from project root:

$ rg "#pragma clang"
include/bpftune/bpftune.bpf.h
284:#pragma clang loop unroll(full)

include/bpftune/vmlinux_x86_64.h
5:#pragma clang attribute push (__attribute__((preserve_access_index)), apply_to = record)
121955:#pragma clang attribute pop

include/bpftune/vmlinux_aarch64.h
5:#pragma clang attribute push (__attribute__((preserve_access_index)), apply_to = record)
135255:#pragma clang attribute pop

Let me know how I can help with this! :smiley:

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Thank you for signing the OCA.

[alan-maguire]

your efforts are greatly appreciated, thanks Brian! On the subject of the warnings, the push attribute for Compile Once, Run Everywhere (CO-RE) is in the bpftool-generated vmlinux files as you've observed. That attribute is not supported in gcc so there are efforts upstream to support a gcc-friendly vmlinux.h generation. That said, gcc-bpf does support CO-Re so I think we should be able to get BTF relocations to work regardless. I suggest we regenerate our vmlinux.h files once the upstream efforts are complete.

[brianwitte]

Ok, got it! Thank you for getting back to the PR so quickly. That was awesome.

I will look into what the upstream situation is and see if I can get clarity on options available for bpftune.

[alan-maguire]

thanks for working on this! see this thread for more on the bpftool stuff: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20240507095011.15867-1-jose.marchesi@oracle.com/