[Devel] Re: [ckrm-tech] [PATCH 3/9] Containers (V9): Add tasks file interface

[Paul Menage]

On 5/1/07, Balbir Singh <balbir at linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> > +     if (container_is_removed(cont)) {
> > +             retval = -ENODEV;
> > +             goto out2;
> > +     }
>
> Can't we make this check prior to kmalloc() and copy_from_user()?

We could but I'm not sure what it would buy us - we'd be optimizing
for the case that essentially never occurs.

>
>
>
> > +int container_task_count(const struct container *cont) {
> > +     int count = 0;
> > +     struct task_struct *g, *p;
> > +     struct container_subsys_state *css;
> > +     int subsys_id;
> > +     get_first_subsys(cont, &css, &subsys_id);
> > +
> > +     read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
>
> Can be replaced with rcu_read_lock() and rcu_read_unlock()

Are you sure about that? I see many users of
do_each_thread()/while_each_thread() taking a lock on tasklist_lock,
and only one (fs/binfmt_elf.c) that's clearly relying on an RCU
critical sections. Documentation?

>
> Any chance we could get a per-container task list? It will
> help subsystem writers as well.

It would be possible, yes - but we probably wouldn't want the overhead
(additional ref counts and list manipulations on every fork/exit) of
it on by default. We could make it a config option that particular
subsystems could select.

I guess the question is how useful is this really, compared to just
doing a do_each_thread() and seeing which tasks are in the container?
Certainly that's a non-trivial operation, but in what circumstances is
it really necessary to do it?

Paul