[Devel] Re: [PATCH 2/2] Replace pid_t in autofs with struct pid reference

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm at xmission.com):
> Ian Kent <raven at themaw.net> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, 2007-03-16 at 15:44 +0100, Cedric Le Goater wrote:
> >> > How about you send over the autofs4 bit and I'll have a look (the autofs
> >> > patch looked fine). That would save me a bit of time and if there are
> >> > any changes needed I can send an updated patch for you guys to review. I
> >> > don't think autofs4 uses pids differently, in principle, than autofs so
> >> > it "should" be straight forward.
> >> 
> >> Here's the latest.
> >
> > That looks OK to me, assuming the "find_get_pid" and friends do what
> > they suggest, but I'll give it a closer look tomorrow.
> >
> > A ref count is used here, what affect does that have on a thread (or
> > process) that may go away (or be summarily killed) without umounting the
> > mount?
> 
> Nothing.  
> 
> The primary advantage is that you are pid wrap around safe as the struct
> pid will never point to another process after one of those events occurs.
> 
> struct pid is a very small structure so not freeing it when the process
> it originally referred to goes away is no big deal.  Although not leaking
> when you stop using it is still important.
> 
> The other big use of struct pid is that to get the user space pid value
> you call pid_nr().  Depending on the pid namespace of the caller the return
> value of pid_nr() can be different.  So when you store a pid or pass a pid
> between processes that should be done by passing a struct pid because those
> processes could be in different pid namespaces.
> 
> >> Index: 2.6.20/fs/autofs4/waitq.c
> >> ===================================================================
> >> --- 2.6.20.orig/fs/autofs4/waitq.c
> >> +++ 2.6.20/fs/autofs4/waitq.c
> >> @@ -292,8 +292,8 @@ int autofs4_wait(struct autofs_sb_info *
> >>  		wq->ino = autofs4_get_ino(sbi);
> >>  		wq->uid = current->uid;
> >>  		wq->gid = current->gid;
> >> -		wq->pid = current->pid;
> >> -		wq->tgid = current->tgid;
> >> +		wq->pid = pid_nr(task_pid(current));
> >> +		wq->tgid = pid_nr(task_tgid(current));
> >>  		wq->status = -EINTR; /* Status return if interrupted */
> >>  		atomic_set(&wq->wait_ctr, 2);
> >>  		mutex_unlock(&sbi->wq_mutex);
> 
> I have a concern with this bit as I my quick review said the wait queue
> persists, and if so we should be cache the struct pid pointer, not the
> pid_t value.  Heck the whol pid_nr(task_xxx(current)) idiom I find very
> suspicious.

Based just on what I see right here I agree it seems like we would want
to store a ref to the pid, not store the pid_nr(pid) output, so in this
context it is suspicious.

OTOH if you're saying that using pid_nr(task_pid(current)) anywhere
should always be 'wrong', then please explain why, as I think we have a
disagreement on the meanings of the structs involved.  In other words,
at some point I expect the only way to get a "pid number" out of a task
would be using this exact idiom, "pid_nr(task_pid(current))".

-serge
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