/btkernel

Fast Binary Translator for the Kernel

Primary LanguageCGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

The code in btmod compiles into a loadable module in the Linux kernel.

To run, follow the following steps:

1. Download the linux kernel source tree from kernel.org
   (latest version if you like)
2. Add a line ``EXPORT_SYMBOL(search_exception_tables)'' after the
   search_exception_table() in kernel/extable.c. Compile and boot from the
   custom kernel for 32-bit x86. While this code requires this small change
   in the kernel, our implementation for [1] disassembles the kernel
   binary (vmlinux) and modules to obtain the exception tables.
3. Download binutils-2.19.tar.bz2 and place in folder btmod/
4. cd btmod/bt
5. ./configure --enable-callopt
               --oldkernel           [if version < 3.5]
               --enable-extable      [if extable.txt exists]
               --enable-inscount
6. sudo ./load
7. If your system doesn't hang and there is no error messages run dmesg.
8. It should print "BT module loaded sucessfully".
9. run 'lsmod | grep bt' to confirm that the module is loaded and running.

Congratulations, you are now running translated!

To unload the module run, ./unload.
To restart the module run, ./unload followed by ./load.


The above procedure lets you run the translated kernel with
identity translations. To implement a custom instrumentation client,
you will need to modify the translation rulebook given in btmod/bt/peep.tab.
More details on the syntax of an entry in the peep.tab file can be found
in doc/ folder.

For some instrumentation clients, you may need to write generic rules
that do not depend on the instruction opcode --- our shadow memory
client in [1] required many such rules. The docs in doc/ folder also
describe how to write such generic rules.

Good luck! and please let us know about how you used this implementation.

thanks,

Piyus Kedia  (piyus.kedia@cse.iitd.ernet.in)
Sorav Bansal (sbansal@cse.iitd.ernet.in)

References:
[1] Fast Dynamic Binary Translation for the Kernel, SOSP 2013