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NAME

kcov — kernel code coverage tracing

SYNOPSIS

pseudo-device kcov 1

#include <sys/kcov.h>

DESCRIPTION

The kcov driver implements collection of code coverage inside the kernel. It can be enabled on a per thread basis from userland, allowing the kernel program counter to be collected during syscalls triggered by the same thread. The collected coverage can be accessed by mapping the device using mmap(2).

By default, kcov is not enabled but instead requires the following line to be present in the kernel configuration:

pseudo-device kcov 1

The following ioctl(2) calls are provided:

KIOSETBUFSIZE unsigned long *nentries

Allocate a coverage buffer with a capacity of nentries. The buffer can be accessed using mmap(2), whereas the returned pointer must be interpreted as an array of unsigned long entries. The first entry contains the number of entries in the array, excluding the first entry.

KIOENABLE int *mode

Enable code coverage tracing for the current thread. The mode must be one of the following:

KCOV_MODE_TRACE_PC

Trace the kernel program counter.

KCOV_MODE_TRACE_CMP

Trace comparison instructions and switch statements. For switch statements, the number of traced comparison instructions is equal to the number of switch cases. Each traced comparison instruction is represented by 4 entries in the coverage buffer:

1. A mask where the least significant bit is set if one of the comparison operands is a compile-time constant, which is always true for switch statements. The remaining bits represents the log2 size of the operands, ranging from 0 to 3.
2. First comparison operand. For switch statements, this operand corresponds to the case value.
3. Second comparison operand. For switch statements, this operand corresponds to the value passed to switch.
4. Kernel program counter where the comparison instruction took place.

In this mode, the first entry in the coverage buffer reflects the number of traced comparison instructions. Thus, the effective number of entries in the coverage buffer is given by multiplying the first entry by 4.

KIODISABLE void

Disable code coverage tracing for the current thread.

FILES

/dev/kcov

Default device node.

EXAMPLES

In the following example, the read(2) syscall is traced and the coverage displayed, which in turn can be passed to addr2line(1) in order to translate the kernel program counter into the file name and line number it corresponds to.

#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <sys/kcov.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>

#include <err.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main(void)
{
	unsigned long *cover, i;
	unsigned long size = 1024;
	int fd, mode;

	fd = open("/dev/kcov", O_RDWR);
	if (fd == -1)
		err(1, "open");

	if (ioctl(fd, KIOSETBUFSIZE, &size) == -1)
		err(1, "ioctl: KIOSETBUFSIZE");
	cover = mmap(NULL, size * sizeof(unsigned long),
	    PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
	if (cover == MAP_FAILED)
		err(1, "mmap");

	mode = KCOV_MODE_TRACE_PC;
	if (ioctl(fd, KIOENABLE, &mode) == -1)
		err(1, "ioctl: KIOENABLE");
	read(-1, NULL, 0);
	if (ioctl(fd, KIODISABLE) == -1)
		err(1, "ioctl: KIODISABLE");

	for (i = 0; i < cover[0]; i++)
		printf("%p\n", (void *)cover[i + 1]);

	if (munmap(cover, size * sizeof(unsigned long)) == -1)
		err(1, "munmap");
	close(fd);

	return 0;
}

SEE ALSO

files.conf(5)

HISTORY

The kcov driver first appeared in OpenBSD 6.4.

AUTHORS

The kcov driver was written by Anton Lindqvist <anton@openbsd.org>.

CAVEATS

The kcov driver is limited to architectures using clang(1) as their default compiler.