From e77ad6da90aed0c76cfaff76012b07b9ee4edf44 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2025 19:11:23 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] tracing: Show printable characters in syscall arrays

When displaying the contents of the user space data passed to the kernel,
instead of just showing the array values, also print any printable
content.

Instead of just:

  bash-1113    [003] .....  3433.290654: sys_write(fd: 2, buf: 0x555a8deeddb0 (72:6f:6f:74:40:64:65:62:69:61:6e:2d:78:38:36:2d:36:34:3a:7e:23:20), count: 0x16)

Display:

  bash-1113    [003] .....  3433.290654: sys_write(fd: 2, buf: 0x555a8deeddb0 (72:6f:6f:74:40:64:65:62:69:61:6e:2d:78:38:36:2d:36:34:3a:7e:23:20) "root@debian-x86-64:~# ", count: 0x16)

This only affects tracing and does not affect perf, as this only updates
the output from the kernel. The output from perf is via user space. This
may change by an update to libtraceevent that will then update perf to
have this as well.

Cc: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Cc: Takaya Saeki <takayas@google.com>
Cc: Tom Zanussi <zanussi@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
Cc: Douglas Raillard <douglas.raillard@arm.com>
Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>
Cc: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20251028231148.429422865@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (Google) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
---
 kernel/trace/trace_syscalls.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+)

diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace_syscalls.c b/kernel/trace/trace_syscalls.c
index a2de6364777a..2d1307f13e13 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/trace_syscalls.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/trace_syscalls.c
@@ -155,6 +155,8 @@ print_syscall_enter(struct trace_iterator *iter, int flags,
 	trace_seq_printf(s, "%s(", entry->name);
 
 	for (i = 0; i < entry->nb_args; i++) {
+		bool printable = false;
+		char *str;
 
 		if (trace_seq_has_overflowed(s))
 			goto end;
@@ -193,8 +195,11 @@ print_syscall_enter(struct trace_iterator *iter, int flags,
 
 		val = trace->args[entry->user_arg_size];
 
+		str = ptr;
 		trace_seq_puts(s, " (");
 		for (int x = 0; x < len; x++, ptr++) {
+			if (isascii(*ptr) && isprint(*ptr))
+				printable = true;
 			if (x)
 				trace_seq_putc(s, ':');
 			trace_seq_printf(s, "%02x", *ptr);
@@ -203,6 +208,22 @@ print_syscall_enter(struct trace_iterator *iter, int flags,
 			trace_seq_printf(s, ", %s", EXTRA);
 
 		trace_seq_putc(s, ')');
+
+		/* If nothing is printable, don't bother printing anything */
+		if (!printable)
+			continue;
+
+		trace_seq_puts(s, " \"");
+		for (int x = 0; x < len; x++) {
+			if (isascii(str[x]) && isprint(str[x]))
+				trace_seq_putc(s, str[x]);
+			else
+				trace_seq_putc(s, '.');
+		}
+		if (len < val)
+			trace_seq_printf(s, "\"%s", EXTRA);
+		else
+			trace_seq_putc(s, '"');
 	}
 
 	trace_seq_putc(s, ')');