Re: [PATCH v1] kernel: add a simple timer based software watchpoint

["David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>]

On 6/22/26 10:14, Feng Tang wrote:
> During debugging some bios/hardware related nasty memory corruption
> issues, we found using periodic timer to monitor specific dram/mmio
> physical address is very useful for debugging, which acts like
> a basic software watchpoint.
> 
> For those bugs,  who (and when) change(corrupt) those dram or mmio
> register is hard to trace, and sometimes even hardware jtag debugger
> can't help (say the physical address watchpoint doesn't work).
> 
> The biggest shortcoming of this method is it can never capture the
> exact point like a hardware watchpoint. The idea is trying to
> approach the point by adjusting the timer interval, hoping the caught
> context have enough debug info (which did help us in solving quite
> some bios/hardware bugs)
> 
> The working flow is simple: after suspected address is identified,
> start periodic timer polling it to catch if its value is changed to
> target 'magic' value, then halt the cpu (better limit to have only
> one cpu online), or panic, or print out system information, so that
> the error environment is frozen for further check , or let
> kexec/kdump to record the vmcore, etc.
> 
> One real use case was:
> "
> On an arm64 platform, some BIOS/HW config caused OS boot easy to
> stall in systemd init phase, then the reproducing was simplified it
> by making it boot to console with a function-reduced rootfs, and
> always triggering 'segmentation fault' when running 'less' command.
> 
> By using GDB, some static array of 'less' is found corrupted before
> being written, and one byte in its memory is always '0x33'.At this
> stage the static array is in bss segment first, and backed by kernel
> zero page after first read, so it was an obvious memory corruption.
> 
> HW engineers tried to capture HW traces after the issue happened, but
> could not find valuable hints, as the corruption could happen long
> before 'less' is run, and the trace/context of that time was gone.
> 
> As physical address of kernel zero page was known, and offset of the
> corrupted byte was fixed, the address was A. But HW debugger failed
> to breakpoint the point that address A was written with '0x33'. Then
> this method was used to monitor 'writing 0x33 to A' with 30ms
> interval, and halted the system  by 'while (1);' (the system was made
> to a UP by using 'nr_cpus=1' cmdline parameter) once hit, then HW
> people collected the HW trace they need and root caused it to be a
> bad config.
> "
> 
> The culprits of memory corruption issues we met are mainly:
> * broken devices (like ethernet card)
> * BIOS runtime service
> * silicon bugs
> * kernel itself
> 
> As kernel already have many useful debug featues like slub_debug,
> kasan, kfence, kmemleak etc.., this method could be more fit for the
> upper three types.
> 
> All the settings are module parameters:
> 
>   watch_interval_ms: SW watchpoint check interval in ms
>   paddr_dram_to_watch: Physical dram address to monitor.
>   target_dram_val: Expected value at the dram address that triggers the watchpoint.
>   paddr_mmio_to_watch: Physical mmio address to monitor. Must be 32-bit aligned.
>   target_mmio_val: Expected value at the mmio address that triggers the watchpoint.
>   panic_on_hit: Trigger kernel panic when watchpoint condition hits.
>   hang_on_hit: halt the CPU (wait for HW debugger)
> 
> This provides the basic function, and there are more todoes:
>   * add a ftrace mode to do function level monitoring with ftrace hook,
>     which is more accurate timing wise, as suggested by Steven Rostedt
>   * merge the dram/mmio interface to auto detect it's dram or mmio
>   * support runtime changing the address
>   * move the starting point earlier in boot phase
>   * monitor a whole memory region
>   * currently is monitoring 'changing to a value', add support
>     for 'changing from a value'

That really looks more like the kind of thing you would want to carry as a OOT
hack for your special debugging needs :)

-- 
Cheers,

David