[Devel] Re: Namespaces exhausted CLONE_XXX bits problem

[Pavel Emelyanov]

Cedric Le Goater wrote:
> Pavel Emelyanov wrote:
>> Dave Hansen wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 16:36 -0500, Oren Laadan wrote:
>>>> I second the concern of running out of 64 bits of flags. In fact, the
>>>> problem with the flags is likely to be valid outside our context, and
>>>> general to the linux kernel soon. Should we not discuss it there
>>>> too ? 
>>> It would be pretty easy to make a new one expandable:
>>>
>>> 	sys_newclone(int len, unsigned long *flags_array)
>>>
>>> Then you could give it a virtually unlimited number of "unsigned long"s
>>> pointed to by "flags_array".
>>>
>>> Plus, the old clone just becomes:
>>>
>>>         sys_oldclone(unsigned long flags)
>>>         {
>>>         	do_newclone(1, &flags);
>>>         }
>>>
>>> We could validate the flags array address in sys_newclone(), then call
>>> do_newclone().
>> Hmm. I have an idea how to make this w/o a new system call. This might
>> look wierd, but. Why not stopple the last bit with a CLONE_NEWCLONE and
>> consider the parent_tidptr/child_tidptr in this case as the pointer to 
>> an array of extra arguments/flargs?
> 
> It's a bit hacky but it looks like a good idea to me !
> 
> Shall we use parent_tidptr or child_tidptr to pass a extended array of 
> flags only ? if we could pass the pid of the task to be cloned, it would 
> be useful for c/r.

Yup. I think we can declare a

struct new_clone_arg {
	unsigned int size;
};

and consider the xx_tidptr to be a pointer on it. After this we
may sen patches that add fields to this structure.

E.g. first

 struct new_clone_arg {
 	unsigned int size;
+	unsigned long new_flags;
 };

to add flags for cloning new namespaces. Later

 struct new_clone_arg {
 	unsigned int size;
 	unsigned long new_flags;
+	int desired_pid;
 };

and each code that needs to access the extra argument would need
to check for new_clone_arg->size to be not less than the offset
of the field he need an access to. E.g. like this:

#define clone_arg_has(arg, member)	({			\
	struct new_clone_arg *__carg = arg;			\
	(__carg->size >= offsetof(struct new_clone_arg, member) + \
		sizeof(__carg->member)) })

...

if (!clone_arg_has(arg, desired_pid))
	return -EINVAL;

This would keep the API always compatible.

> C.
> 

Thanks,
Pavel
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