[Devel] [PATCH] Allow signalling container-init

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Daniel Pittman (daniel at rimspace.net):
> "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue at us.ibm.com> writes:
> > Quoting Daniel Pittman (daniel at rimspace.net):
> >> sukadev at us.ibm.com writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> > TODO:	Ideally we should allow killing the container-init only from
> >> > 	ancestor containers and prevent it being killed from that or
> >> > 	descendant containers.  But that is a more complex change and
> >> > 	will be addressed by a follow-on patch. For now allow the
> >> > 	container-init to be terminated by any process with sufficient
> >> > 	privileges.
> >> 
> >> This will break, as far as I can see, by allowing the container root to
> >> send signals to init that it doesn't expect.
> >
> > Yes, in the end what we want is for a container init to receive
> >
> > 	1. all signals from a (authorized) process in a parent
> > 	   pid namespace.
> > 	2. for signals sent from inside it's pid namespace, only
> > 	   exactly those signals for which it has installed a
> > 	   custom signal handler, no others.
> >
> > In other words to a process in an ancestor pid namespace, the init of a
> > container is like any other process.  To a process inside the namespace
> > for which it is init, it is as /sbin/init is to the system now.
> 
> That makes sense.
> 
> > Actually achieving that without affecting performance for all
> > signalers is nontrivial.  The current patchset is complex enough that
> > I'd like to see us settle on non-optimal semantics for now, and once
> > these patches have settled implement the ideal signaling.
> 
> I appreciate that.  I figured to make you aware that this will make it
> impossible to run upstart and, probably, other versions of init in your
> container as expected.
> 
> Since this was a somewhat subtle bug to track down it is, I think, work
> documenting so that people trying to use this code are aware of the
> limitation.

Agreed.  I do think it is documented in the code and in changelogs.
Maybe it's worth adding a Documentation/ file describing how to use the
pid namespaces, ideal semantics, and current shortcomings, for people
who want to use+test the feature rather than work with the kernel code.

-serge
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