eBPF: Properly passing fixed length strings from userspace using eBPF array maps

I have a BPF_MAP_TYPE_ARRAY map that stores instances of this struct:

    struct target_d_name {
        unsigned long int len;
        char name[PID_LEN_MAX]; //PID_LEN_MAX = 8, it is a macro
    };

Here is the map definition:

    struct {
        __uint(type, BPF_MAP_TYPE_ARRAY);
        __uint(max_entries, 8);
        __type(key, u32);
        __type(value, sizeof(struct target_d_name));
    } map_d_name_tgts SEC(".maps");

What I am doing can be summarised as the following:

1. Hook exit of getents64
2. Loop through all dirent64 structures being returned
3. See if any of dirent64->d_name strings match anything in target_d_name->name

Here is the code that does the actual string comparison between the dirent64 strings and the strings in my map:

    //iterator_limit is either len(filename) or PID_LEN_MAX, whichever is smallest
    for (k = 0; k < iterator_limit; ++k) {
      if (filename[k] != target_d_name_instance->name[k]) break;
    }

As you can see, everything is in bounds. However at load time the eBPF verifier errors out with:

    invalid access to map value, value_size=8 off=8 size=1
    R5 min value is outside of the allowed memory range

Where R5 attempts to dereference the address of target_d_name_instance->name[k].

At first I expected this to work since everything is in bounds. Upon further investigation however I found numerous other people who have come across this problem. Namely:

• eBPF: invalid access to map value even with bounds check
• https://github.com/iovisor/bcc/issues/3269
• https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/[email protected]/T/

From these links I gathered that the eBPF verifier fails to keep track of the size of the character buffers in my struct. As such, when I iterate with 0 <= k <= PID_LEN_MAX, at some point k may fall outside the allowed memory range. While this is impossible, the eBPF verifier isn't aware of this.

However I still don't know how what my new approach should be. How else can I pass strings to my eBPF programs from userspace? What if I need to carry out string comparisons on them and hence iterate over them? I noticed the existence of the bpf_strncmp() helper, but it only works on constants and is therefore not very useful if the strings are being dynamically generated.

UPDATE:

Here is a minimal example that produces an identical error:

    u32 index = 0;
    struct target_d_name * current_d_name 
        = bpf_map_lookup_elem(&map_d_name_tgts, &index);
    if (current_d_name == 0) return -1;

    for (int i = 0; i < PID_LEN_MAX; ++i) {
        current_d_name->name[i] = 'u';
    }
    return 0;