[Devel] Re: [RFC][PATCH 4/4] PID: use the target ID specified in procfs

[Nadia Derbey]

Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> "Nadia Derbey" <Nadia.Derbey at bull.net> writes:
> 
>>A couple of weeks ago, a discussion has started after Pierre's proposal for
>>a new syscall to change an ipc id (see thread
>>http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/29/209).
>>
>>
>>Oren's suggestion was to force an object's id during its creation, rather
>>than 1. create it, 2. change its id.
>>
>>So here is an implementation of what Oren has suggested.
>>
>>2 new files are defined under /proc/self:
>>  . next_ipcid --> next id to use for ipc object creation
>>  . next_pids --> next upid nr(s) to use for next task to be forked
>>                  (see patch #2 for more details).
>>
>>When one of these files (or both of them) is filled, a structure pointed to
>>by the calling task struct is filled with these ids.
>>
>>Then, when the object is created, the id(s) present in that structure are
>>used, instead of the default ones.
>>A couple of weeks ago, a discussion has started after Pierre's proposal for
>>a new syscall to change an ipc id (see thread
>>http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/29/209).
>>
>>
>>Oren's suggestion was to force an object's id during its creation, rather
>>than 1. create it, 2. change its id.
>>
>>So here is an implementation of what Oren has suggested.
>>
>>2 new files are defined under /proc/self:
>>  . next_ipcid --> next id to use for ipc object creation
>>  . next_pids --> next upid nr(s) to use for next task to be forked
>>                  (see patch #2 for more details).
>>
>>When one of these files (or both of them) is filled, a structure pointed to
>>by the calling task struct is filled with these ids.
>>
>>Then, when the object is created, the id(s) present in that structure are
>>used, instead of the default ones.
> 
> 
> "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue at us.ibm.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Right the alloc_pidmap() changes will probably be pretty much the same
>>no matter how we do set_it(), so it's worth discussing.  But I'm
>>particularly curious to see what opinions are on the sys_setid().
> 
> 
> A couple of comments.  With respect to alloc_pidmap we already have
> the necessary controls (a minimum and a maximum) in place for the
> allocation.  So except for double checking that those controls are exported
> in /proc/sys we don't necessarily need to do anything, special.
> 
> Just play games with the minimum pid value before you fork.

Excellent idea! It's trus that properly setting things, we can make the 
loops executed only once in case we want to use a predefined id.

> 
> Second at least to get the memory map correct we need additional
> kernel support.
> 
> 
> Third to actually get the values out it appears we need additional kernel
> support as well.  From my limited playing with these things at least
> parts of the code were easier to implement in the kernel.  The hoops
> you have to go to restore a single process (without threads) are
> absolutely horrendous in user space.

Ok, but if we have a process that belongs to nested namepsaces, we have 
no other choice than provide its upid nrs hierarchy, right?
So, I guess it's more the way it is presented that you don't agree with 
(of course provided that we are in a user space oriented solution)?

> 
> So this patchset whether it is setid or setting the id at creation time
> seems to be jumping the gun.  For some namespaces renames are valid and
> we can support them.  For other namespaces setting the id is a big no-no,
> and possibly even controlling the id at creation time is a problem (at
> least in the general sense).

I'm sorry but I'm pretty new in this domain, so I don't see what are the 
namespaces where setting (or pre-setting) the id would be a problem?

> Because if you can easily control the id
> you may be able to more easily exploit security holes.
> 
> I'm not at all inclined to make it easy for userspace to rename or set
> the id of a new resource unless it already makes sense in that
> namespace.
> 
> We need to limit anything in a checkpoint to user space visible
> state.

OK, but a tasks that belongs to nested pid namespaces is known from 
other tasks as one of its "intermediate" pids, depending on the 
namespace level we are considering. So we can consider these 
"intermediate pids" as user space visible, can't we?

Given the following pid namespaces hierarchy:
PNS0 -> PNS1 -> PNS2 -> PNS3 -> PNS4
A task that belongs to PSN2 has 3 upid nrs:
UP0, UP1, and UP2
So:
. UP0 can be obtained if we do a "ps -ef" in pid ns #1 (PNS0)
. UP1 can be obtained if we do a "ps -ef" in pid ns #1 (PNS1)
. UP2 can be obtained if we do a "ps -ef" in pid ns #1 (PNS2)

So UP[0-2] are user space visible (again, depending on "where" we are in 
pid ns hierarchy, aren't they?

> For sockets this can get fairly abstract since on the wire
> state of a tcp socket is in some sense user visible.  However it
> should not include things that user space can never see like socket
> hash values.
> 
> Partly what this set of patches demonstrates is that it is fairly
> straight forward to restore ids.  Getting the little details of the
> proper maintainable user space interface correct is harder.
> 
> The goal with any userspace implementation is to that we can separate
> policy form mechanism.   So what are the trade offs for various
> approaches.
> 
> At least for inspection at the checkpoint side it would be nice for
> debugging applications to easily get at all of the user space visible
> state.  So there is an argument for making state that is only
> indirectly visible, visible for diagnostic and debugging purposes.
> 
> For saving the state to disk it appears we need to stop all of the
> processes in our container.  Again something a debugging application
> of an entire container may want to do.  Although we also want to stop
> the hardware queues for things like networking so we don't transmit
> or possibly receive new packets either.
> 
> We want a checkpoint/restart to be essentially atomic, with non
> of the tasks that we stop being able to prove that they ran while
> the checkpoint was being taken.  Mostly this is an interprocess
> communication blackout, but there may be more to it then that.
> 
> We want checkpoint/restart if possible to be incremental.  So
> we can perform actions like live migration efficiently if most of
> the data is not changing.
> 
> So there is an argument to perform the work piecemeal instead of
> in one big shot.  Although if we can load data from wherever
> into the kernel data structures quickly it may not be a big deal.
> 
> We also want the transfer of state to be fast.  Which tends to argue
> in the other direction.  That we want a bulk operation that can save
> out everything and restore everything quickly.
> 
> We also want a design that we can implement incrementally.  So that
> we can avoid supporting everything at first and if there is state
> that we should save that we can't (or similarly state that we should
> restore but we can't) the save/restore fails.  Until that part is
> implemented.
> 
> Further we need to finish difficult things like sysfs support and
> proc support for simply running applications in containers.
> 
> So while I think it is good to be thinking and playing with these
> ideas now.  I think having a more complete story and not pecking on
> the pieces right now is important.

Sure, I completely agree with you! So may be the 1st thing to do would 
be to decide which approach (user space vs kernel) should be adopted for 
c/r? Sorry if what I'm saying is stupid, but imho a clear answer to this 
question would make us all go the same direction ==> save time for 
further investigations.

> 
> My inclination is that create with a specified set of ids is the
> proper internal kernel API, so we don't have rework things later,
> because reworking things seems to be a lot more work.

Completely agree with you: the earlier in the object's life we do it, 
the best it is ;-)

> How we want to
> export this to user space is another matter.
> 
> One suggestion is to a have /proc or a proc like filesystem that
> allows us to read, create, and populate files to see all of the
> application state.

And that would be quite useful for debugging purpose, as you were saying 
earlier.

> Then in userspace it is possible that the
> transfer of the checkpoint would be as simple as rsync.
> 
> Ok back to my cave for a bit.
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 

Regards,
Nadia

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