
Dealing with missing system call or ioctl wrappers in Valgrind
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You're probably reading this because Valgrind bombed out whilst
running your program, and advised you to read this file.  The good
news is that, in general, it's easy to write the missing syscall or
ioctl wrappers you need, so that you can continue your debugging.  If
you send the resulting patches to me, then you'll be doing a favour to
all future Valgrind users too.

Note that an "ioctl" is just a special kind of system call, really; so
there's not a lot of need to distinguish them (at least conceptually)
in the discussion that follows.

All this machinery is in vg_syscall_mem.c.


What are syscall/ioctl wrappers?  What do they do?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Valgrind does what it does, in part, by keeping track of the status of
all bytes of memory accessible by your program.  When a system call
happens, for example a request to read part of a file, control passes
to the Linux kernel, which fulfills the request, and returns control
to your program.  The problem is that the kernel will often change the
status of some part of your program's memory as a result.

The job of syscall and ioctl wrappers is to spot such system calls,
and update Valgrind's memory status maps accordingly.  This is
essential, because not doing so would cause you to be flooded with
errors later on, and, in general, because it's important that
Valgrind's idea of accessible memory corresponds to that of the Linux
kernel's.  And for other reasons too.

In addition, Valgrind takes the opportunity to perform some sanity
checks on the parameters you are presenting to system calls.  This
isn't essential for the correct operation of Valgrind, but it does
allow it to warn you about various kinds of misuses which would
otherwise mean your program just dies without warning, usually with a
segmentation fault.

So, let's look at an example of a wrapper for a system call which
should be familiar to many Unix programmers.


The syscall wrapper for read()
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Removing the debug printing clutter, it looks like this:

   case __NR_read: /* syscall 3 */
      /* size_t read(int fd, void *buf, size_t count); */
      must_be_writable( "read(buf)", arg2, arg3 );
      KERNEL_DO_SYSCALL(res);
      if (!VG_(is_kerror)(res) && res > 0) {
         make_readable( arg2, res );
      }
      break;

The first thing we do is check that the buffer, which you planned to
have the result written to, really is addressible ("writable", here).
Hence:

      must_be_writable( "read(buf)", arg2, arg3 );

which causes Valgrind to issue a warning if the address range 
[arg2 .. arg2 + arg3 - 1] is not writable.  This is one of those
nice-to-have-but-not-essential checks mentioned above.  Note that
the syscall args are always called arg1, arg2, arg3, etc.  Here,
arg1 corresponds to "fd" in the prototype, arg2 to "buf", and arg3 
to "count".

Now Valgrind asks the kernel to do the system call, depositing the
return code in "res":

      KERNEL_DO_SYSCALL(res);

Finally, the really important bit.  If, and only if, the system call
was successful, mark the buffer as readable (ie, as having valid
data), for as many bytes as were actually read:

      if (!VG_(is_kerror)(res) && res > 0) {
         make_readable( arg2, res );
      }

The function VG_(is_kerror) tells you whether or not its argument
represents a Linux kernel return error code.  Hence the test.


Writing your own syscall wrappers (see below for ioctl wrappers)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If Valgrind tells you that system call NNN is unimplemented, do the 
following:

1.  Find out the name of the system call:

       grep NNN /usr/include/asm/unistd.h

    This should tell you something like  __NR_mysyscallname.


2.  Do 'man 2 mysyscallname' to get some idea of what the syscall
    does.


3.  Add a case to the already-huge collection of wrappers in 
    vg_syscall_mem.c.  For each in-memory parameter which is read
    by the syscall, do a must_be_readable or must_be_readable_asciiz
    on that parameter.  Then do the syscall.  Then, if the syscall
    succeeds, issue suitable make_readable/writable/noaccess calls
    afterwards, so as to update Valgrind's memory maps to reflect
    the state change caused by the call.

    If you find this difficult, read the wrappers for other syscalls
    for ideas.  A good tip is to look for the wrapper for a syscall
    which has a similar behaviour to yours, and use it as a 
    starting point.

    If you have to #include headers for structure definitions,
    put your #includes into vg_unsafe.h.

    Test it.

    Note that a common error is to call make_readable or make_writable 
    with 0 (NULL) as the first (address) argument.  This usually means your
    logic is slightly inadequate.  It's a sufficiently common bug that
    there's a built-in check for it, and you'll get a "probably sanity 
    check failure" for the syscall wrapper you just made, if this is
    the case.

    Note that many syscalls are bracketed by #if defined(__NR_mysyscall)
    ... #endif, because they exist only in the 2.4 kernel and not
    the 2.2 kernel.  This enables the same piece of code to serve both
    kernels.  Please try and stick to this convention.


4.  Once happy, send me the patch.  Pretty please.


Writing your own ioctl wrappers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is pretty much the same as writing syscall wrappers.

If you can't be bothered, do a cheap hack: add it (the ioctl number
emitted in Valgrind's panic-message) to the long list of IOCTLs which
are noted but not fully handled by Valgrind (search for the text
"noted but unhandled ioctl" in vg_syscall_mem.c).  This will get you
going immediately, at the risk of giving you spurious value errors.

As above, please do send me the resulting patch.