[Devel] Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Resend - Use procfs to change a syscall behavior

[Nadia Derbey]

Pavel Machek wrote:
> On Thu 2008-07-10 09:42:03, Nadia Derbey wrote:
> 
>>Pavel Machek wrote:
>>
>>>Hi!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>An alternative to this solution consists in defining a new field in the
>>>>>>task structure (let's call it next_syscall_data) that, if set, would change
>>>>>>the behavior of next syscall to be called. The sys_fork_with_id() previously
>>>>>>cited can be replaced by
>>>>>>1) set next_syscall_data to a target upid nr
>>>>>>2) call fork().
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>...bloat task struct and
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>A new file is created in procfs: /proc/self/task/<my_tid>/next_syscall_data.
>>>>>>This makes it possible to avoid races between several threads belonging to
>>>>>>the same process.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>...introducing this kind of uglyness.
>>>>>
>>>>>Actually, there were proposals for sys_indirect(), which is slightly
>>>>>less ugly, but IIRC we ended up with adding syscalls, too.
>>>
>>>
>>>>I had a look at the lwn.net article that describes the sys_indirect() 
>>>>interface.
>>>>It does exactly what we need here, so I do like it, but it has the same 
>>>>drawbacks as the one you're complaining about:
>>>>. a new field is needed in the task structure
>>>>. looks like many people found it ugly...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Now, coming back to what I'm proposing: what we need is actually to 
>>>>change the behavior of *existing* syscalls, since we are in a very 
>>>>particular context (restarting an application).
>>>
>>>
>>>Changing existing syscalls is _bad_: for backwards compatibility
>>>reasons.
>>
>>I'm sorry but I don't see a backward compatibility problem: same interface, 
>>same functionality provided. The only change is in the way ids are 
>>assigned.
> 
> 
> If you don't see a backward compatibility problem here, perhaps you
> should not be hacking kernel...? 

Thx for the advice, will try think about it...

> The way ids are assigned is certainly
> part of syscall semantics (applications rely on), at least for open.
> 
> If you want to claim that your solution is better than adding milion
> of syscalls, I guess you need to list the milion of syscalls, so we
> can compare.
> 

I'm not claiming anything: just trying to see what actually are the 
pro's and con's for any proposed solution.

Regards,
Nadia

> 
>>Actually, one drawback I'm seeing is that we are adding a test to the 
>>classical syscall path (the test on the current->next_syscall_data being 
>>set or not).
>>
>>
>>>strace will be very confusing to read, etc...
>>
>>We'll have the 3 following lines added to an strace output each time we 
>>fill the proc file:
>>
>>open("/proc/15084/task/15084/next_syscall_data", O_RDWR) = 4
>>write(4, "LONG1 100", 9)                = 9
>>close(4)                                = 0
>>
>>I don't see anthing confusing here ;-)
> 
> 
> No, that part is just very very ugly.
> 
> close(5)
> close(6)
> open("foo") = 6
> 
> _is_ confusing to me.
> 									Pavel

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