[Devel] Re: [RFC][PATCH 7/7][v2] Define clone_with_pids syscall

Sukadev Bhattiprolu sukadev at linux.vnet.ibm.com
Thu May 28 22:46:45 PDT 2009


Oren Laadan [orenl at cs.columbia.edu] wrote:
| 
| 
| Sukadev Bhattiprolu wrote:
| > Here is an updated patch with hopefully some useful comments on why
| > we copy to the end of target_pids[] (comments were harder to write
| > than the code :-)
| > 
| > ---
| > From: Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
| > Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 01:17:45 -0700
| > Subject: [PATCH 7/7] Define clone_with_pids syscall
| > 
| > Container restart requires that a task have the same pid it had when it was
| > checkpointed. When containers are nested the tasks within the containers
| > exist in multiple pid namespaces and hence have multiple pids to specify
| > during restart.
| > 
| > clone_with_pids(), intended for use during restart, is the same as clone(),
| > except that it takes a 'target_pid_set' paramter. This parameter lets caller
| > choose specific pid numbers for the child process, in the process's active
| > and descendant pid namespaces. Since the application does/can not know of any
| > ancestor pid namespaces, it cannot choose a pid in those namespaces.

Grr, I got this backwards. The application chooses pid numbers in active
and ancestor namespaces. It can/does NOT need a pid in descendant
namespaces. I had it wrong in the code too and fixed it but missed the
patch description.


| 
| I think the term "descendant pid namespaces" is confusing, because it
| can be interpreted as the collection of all descendant namespaces (e.g.
| by all children of a task), which is a tree. And I'm unsure what does
| "ancestor pid namespaces" mean.
| 
| I'd say that both "descendant" and "ancestor" here are defined with
| respect to the nesting level of root task of a restart. Or otherwise
| say explicitly that it's relative to the nesting level at which the
| restart operation occurs.
| 
| In my mind, clone_with_pid() is performed from "within" the deepest
| level - in which the child will "live" - and the pids array then
| works "bottom-up" in the sense that it indicates the desired pids
| as you go up the ancestry chain (going up is always well defined).
| 
| Right now the restart with a flat pid-ns works by first devising a
| schedule and then following that schedule with forks/clones to
| generate a process tree.
| 
| To also restore pids, we need only use clone_with_pid() with an array
| of size 1, and we're good.
| 
| To restart nested pid-ns from userspace, we need to devise a schedule
| that will command a sequence of fork/clones. The schedule will tell
| when to use the CLONE_NEWPID to create a sub-pid-ns. When that happens,
| we'll increment the size of the pids array - for that clone and all
| subsequent clones by that task and its descendents.
| 
| So the clone_with_pids occurs in the context of the deepest pid-ns, so
| to speak, and the arrays of pids works its way "upwards"
| 
| (That's probably what you meant, anyway).
| 
| > 
| > Unlike clone(), clone_with_pids() needs CAP_SYS_ADMIN, at least for now, to
| > prevent unprivileged processes from misusing this interface.
| > 
| > Call clone_with_pids as follows:
| > 
| > 	pid_t pids[] = { 0, 77, 99 };
| > 	struct target_pid_set pid_set;
| > 
| > 	pid_set.num_pids = sizeof(pids) / sizeof(int);
| > 	pid_set.target_pids = &pids;
| > 
| > 	syscall(__NR_clone_with_pids, flags, stack, NULL, NULL, NULL, &pid_set);
| > 
| > If a target-pid is 0, the kernel continues to assign a pid for the process in
| > that namespace. In the above example, pids[0] is 0, meaning the kernel will
| > assign next available pid to the process in init_pid_ns. But kernel will assign
| > pid 77 in the child pid namespace 1 and pid 99 in pid namespace 2. If either
| > 77 or 99 are taken, the system call fails with -EBUSY.
| > 
| > If 'pid_set.num_pids' exceeds the current nesting level of pid namespaces,
| > the system call fails with -EINVAL.
| > 
| > Its mostly an exploratory patch seeking feedback on the interface.
| > 
| > NOTE:
| > 	Compared to clone(), clone_with_pids() needs to pass in two more
| > 	pieces of information:
| > 
| > 		- number of pids in the set
| > 		- user buffer containing the list of pids.
| > 
| > 	But since clone() already takes 5 parameters, use a 'struct
| > 	target_pid_set'.
| > 
| > TODO:
| > 	- Gently tested.
| > 	- May need additional sanity checks in do_fork_with_pids().
| > 	- Allow CLONE_NEWPID() with clone_with_pids() (ensure target-pid in
| > 	  the namespace is either 1 or 0).
| > 
| > Changelog[v2]:
| > 	- (Oren Laadan) Specified target pids should apply to youngest
| > 	  pid-namespaces only (see comments in copy_target_pids())
| > 	- Remove unnecessary printk and add a note to callers of
| > 	  copy_target_pids() to free target_pids.
| > 	- (Matt Helsley) Update patch description.
| > 	- (Serge Hallyn) Mention CAP_SYS_ADMIN restriction in patch description.
| > 	- (Oren Laadan) Add checks for 'num_pids < 0' (return -EINVAL) and
| > 	  'num_pids == 0' (fall back to normal clone()).
| > 	- Move arch-independent code (sanity checks and copy-in of target-pids)
| > 	  into kernel/fork.c and simplify sys_clone_with_pids()
| > 
| > Changelog[v1]:
| > 	- Fixed some compile errors (had fixed these errors earlier in my
| > 	  git tree but had not refreshed patches before emailing them)
| > 
| > Signed-off-by: Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
| > Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue at us.ibm.com>
| > ---
| 
| [...]
| 
| 
| > diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
| > index a16ef7b..06b1583 100644
| > --- a/kernel/fork.c
| > +++ b/kernel/fork.c
| > @@ -1335,6 +1335,84 @@ struct task_struct * __cpuinit fork_idle(int cpu)
| >  }
| >  
| >  /*
| > + * If user specified any 'target-pids' in @upid_setp, copy them from
| > + * user and return a pointer to a local copy of the list of pids. The
| > + * caller must free the list, when they are done using it.
| > + *
| > + * If user did not specify any target pids, return NULL (caller should
| > + * treat this like normal clone).
| > + *
| > + * On any errors, return the error code
| > + */
| > +static pid_t *copy_target_pids(void __user *upid_setp)
| > +{
| > +	int j;
| > +	int rc;
| > +	int size;
| > +	int num_pids;
| > +	int nesting;
| > +	pid_t __user *utarget_pids;
| > +	pid_t *target_pids;
| > +	struct target_pid_set pid_set;
| > +
| > +	if(!upid_setp)
| > +		return NULL;
| > +
| > +	if (copy_from_user(&pid_set, upid_setp, sizeof(pid_set)))
| > +		return ERR_PTR(-EFAULT);
| > +
| > +	num_pids = pid_set.num_pids;
| > +	utarget_pids = pid_set.target_pids;
| > +	nesting = task_pid(current)->level + 1;
| 
| I should have mentioned earlier, but there is also the case of
| CLONE_NEWPID. If CLONE_NEWPID is given, then @nesting should be
| plus one, _and_ the corresponding pid must be 1 or 0.

Right. do_fork_with_pids() checks if CLONE_NEWPID is specified with
target_pids and returns -EINVAL for now.
| 
| And this consideration deserves fat comment :)
| 
| > +
| > +	if (!num_pids)
| > +		return NULL;
| > +
| > +	if (num_pids < 0 || num_pids > nesting)
| > +		return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
| > +
| > +	target_pids = kzalloc((nesting * sizeof(pid_t)), GFP_KERNEL);
| > +	if (!target_pids)
| > +		return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);
| > +
| > +	/*
| > +	 * A process running in a level-1 pid namespace has two pid
| > +	 * namespaces and hence two pid numbers. If this process is
| > +	 * checkpointed, information about these two namespaces are
| > +	 * saved. We refer to these namespaces as 'known namespaces'.
| > +	 *
| > +	 * If this checkpointed process is however restarted in a 
| > +	 * level-2 pid namespace, the restarted process has an extra
| > +	 * ancestor pid namespace (i.e 'unknown namespace').
| > +	 *
| > +	 * During restart, the process requests specific pids for its
| > +	 * 'known namespaces' and lets kernel assign pids to its 'unknown
| > +	 * namespaces'. 
| > +	 *
| > +	 * Since the requested-pids correspond to 'known namespaces' and
| > +	 * since 'known-namespaces' are younger than (i.e descendants of)
| > +	 * 'unknown-namespaces', copy requested pids to end of target_pids[]
| > +	 * and copy zeroes to the beginning (so kernel can assign a pid for
| > +	 * the unknown namespaces).
| > +	 *
| > +	 * NOTE: The order of pids in target_pids[] is oldest pid namespace
| > +	 * 	 to youngest (i.e target_pids[0] corresponds to init_pid_ns). 
| > +	 */
| 
| Reads good!
| 
| [...]
| 
| Oren.
_______________________________________________
Containers mailing list
Containers at lists.linux-foundation.org
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/containers




More information about the Devel mailing list