@ryantimwilson is interested in reviving this, so I'm going to summarize and expand on my comments on the last attempt:

Before we modify path_lookup() itself, we're going to need a new helper in drgn/helpers/linux/fs.py along these lines:

class SymlinkNotCachedError(Exception):
    """Error raised when attempting to read an uncached symbolic link."""


def inode_readlink(inode: Object) -> bytes:
    """
    Return the target of a symbolic link.

    >>> inode = path_lookup("/bin").dentry.d_inode
    >>> inode_readlink(inode)
    b'usr/bin'

    :param inode: ``struct inode *``
    :return: Link target
    :raises ValueError: if *inode* is not a symbolic link
    :raises SymlinkNotCachedError: if the link target is not cached
    :raises NotImplementedError: if reading symbolic links is not yet
        implemented for the filesystem containing *inode*
    """
    ...

Basically, when the target of a symlink inode is requested in the kernel, the filesystem reads it from the disk/network/etc. and usually caches it somewhere. drgn can obviously only read it if it is cached. The tricky thing is that filesystems cache it differently. See vfs_readlink() in the kernel, which calls the filesystem's ->get_link() callback.

So, we're going to need to pick an initial set of filesystems to implement this for. inode_readlink() can check the ->get_link() callback to figure out how to proceed . E.g., if inode.i_op.get_link == prog["page_get_link"]: ... emulate page_get_link .... For the initial PR, I'd suggest starting with one or both of these:

• Btrfs: uses page_get_link(), which caches the symlink in the page cache.
• sysfs: instance of kernfs, which uses kernfs_iop_get_link().

Then, we could add these in followup PRs:

• ext4: three possibilities depending on the filesystem configuration. I'd pretend that the encrypted option doesn't exist for now and only handle the other two.
• XFS: uses xfs_vn_get_link(). It looks complicated.

Once inode_readlink() is implemented for a couple of filesystems, the next step is to use it in path_lookup(). My comment on the previous attempt has some thoughts on how to go about that.