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docs/linux_system_calls.md

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+# Introduction
+
+Linux implements its userland-to-kernel transition using a special library
+called linux-gate.so that is mapped by the kernel into every process. For more
+information, see
+
+http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/08/linux-gate/
+
+In a nutshell, the problem is that the system call gate function,
+kernel\_vsyscall does not use EBP to point to the frame pointer.
+
+However, the Breakpad processor supports special frames like this via STACK
+lines in the symbol file. If you look in src/client/linux/data you will see
+symbol files for linux-gate.so for both Intel & AMD(the implementation of
+kernel\_vsyscall changes depending on the CPU manufacturer). When processing
+minidumps from Linux 2.6, having these symbol files is necessary for walking the
+stack for crashes that happen while a thread is in a system call.
+
+If you're just interested in processing minidumps, those two symbol files should
+be all you need!
+
+# Details
+
+The particular details of understanding the linux-gate.so symbol files can be
+found by reading about STACK lines inside
+src/common/windows/pdb\_source\_line\_writer.cc, and the above link. To
+summarize briefly, we just have to inform the processor how to get to the
+previous frame when the EIP is inside kernel\_vsyscall, and we do that by
+telling the processor how many bytes kernel\_vsyscall has pushed onto the stack
+in it's prologue. For example, one of the symbol files looks somewhat like the
+following:
+
+MODULE Linux x86 random\_debug\_id linux-gate.so PUBLIC 400 0 kernel\_vsyscall
+STACK WIN 4 100 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
+
+The PUBLIC line indicates that kernel\_vsyscall is at offset 400 (in bytes) from
+the beginning of linux-gate.so. The STACK line indicates the size of the
+function(100), how many bytes it pushes(1), and how many bytes it pops(1). The
+last 1 indicates that EBP is pushed onto the stack before being used by the
+function.
+
+# Warnings
+
+These functions might change significantly depending on kernel version. In my
+opinion, the actual function stack information is unlikely to change frequently,
+but the Linux kernel might change the address of kernel\_vsyscall w.r.t the
+beginning of linux-gate.so, which would cause these symbol files to be invalid.