cmd/pprof: unescaped labels cause dot output to be malformed

[Snaipe]

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
1.18.3

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

Yes

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

go env Output

$ go env
GO111MODULE=""
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/home/snaipe/.local/var/cache/go-build"
GOENV="/home/snaipe/.local/etc/go/env"
GOEXE=""
GOEXPERIMENT=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOINSECURE=""
GOMODCACHE="/home/snaipe/go/pkg/mod"
GONOPROXY=""
GONOSUMDB=""
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/snaipe/go"
GOPRIVATE=""
GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
GOROOT="/usr/lib/go"
GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/lib/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GOVCS=""
GOVERSION="go1.18.3"
GCCGO="gccgo"
GOAMD64="v1"
AR="ar"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
GOMOD="/dev/null"
GOWORK=""
CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build4178454973=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

What did you do?

Label values don't seem to be escaped in the dot output, causing the result to be malformed. For example, given this test program: https://go.dev/play/p/duT2NS2iD7I

Running the program prints the profile base64-encoded to be demonstrable on the go playground. Using go tool pprof on the decoded profile shows the following (emphasis mine):

File: play
Type: cpu
Time: Nov 11, 2009 at 12:00am (CET)
Duration: 200ms, Total samples = 350ms (175.00%)
Entering interactive mode (type "help" for commands, "o" for options)
(pprof) tags
 unescaped: Total 350.0ms
            350.0ms (  100%): some "string" with quotes

(pprof) svg
Error: <stdin>: syntax error in line 5 near '"'
failed to execute dot. Is Graphviz installed? Error: exit status 1
(pprof) dot
digraph "play" {
node [style=filled fillcolor="#f8f8f8"]
subgraph cluster_L { "File: play" [shape=box fontsize=16 label="File: play\lType: cpu\lTime: Nov 11, 2009 at 12:00am (CET)\lDuration: 200ms, Total samples = 350ms (175.00%)\lShowing nodes accounting for 350ms, 100% of 350ms total\l\lSee https://git.io/JfYMW for how to read the graph\l" tooltip="play"] }
N1 [label="sha256\nblock\n270ms (77.14%)" id="node1" fontsize=24 shape=box tooltip="crypto/sha256.block (270ms)" color="#b20d00" fillcolor="#edd7d5"]
N1_0 [label = "unescaped:some "string" with quotes" id="N1_0" fontsize=8 shape=box3d tooltip="270ms"]

<snip>

As you can see, the label = "unescaped:some "string" with quotes" does not parse because "string" terminates the label string. The label should have been label = "unescaped:some \"string\" with quotes" instead.

I confirmed that the correction works by running sed 's/"string"/\"string\"/g' on the generated profile.dot.

See attached profile.zip for the profile file used in this session, as well as expected dot and expected resulting svg.

[heschi]

cc @golang/runtime

[gopherbot]

Change https://go.dev/cl/416355 mentions this issue: runtime: pprof label need to escape double quote

[prattmic]

Thanks for the report.

This certainly needs to be fixed, but I think it should be fixed upstream in https://github.com/google/pprof (which we pull back into go tool pprof). pprof labels are just arbitrary strings, I don't think it makes sense to modify them with "escaping" on the Go side (plus how do we know what form of escaping is correct for all downstream usage?).

In https://github.com/google/pprof/blob/c488b8fa1db3fa467bf30beb5a1d6f4f10bb1b87/internal/graph/dotgraph.go#L250, I see escaping (escapeForDot) on a variety of values, but not on the labels. This bug could affect dot/svg generation in pprof from profiles for sources other than Go as well.

@aalexand @evanj

[Snaipe]

Ah, I wasn't aware that go tool pprof was pulling in google/pprof -- yes, it makes sense to fix it there.

[prattmic]

Sounds good, please open an issue on https://github.com/google/pprof. We pull the latest pprof every release, so a fix will be included for go tool pprof in a subsequent Go release.

[evanj]

My PR google/pprof#689 should fix this bug. It is waiting on review (although there is an edge case related to non-printable characters that I would like to revisit).

[colega]

I've just hit the same issue, I was wondering if we could get any progress on this, and whether some help is needed.

[aalexand]

The google/pprof#689 that @evanj mentioned got stalled for the lack of attention, I think it was my turn. I'll comment there, but not sure if Evan is still willing to finish that work after this long of a context switch.

[aalexand]

I left some comments on that PR.