[Devel] C/R and stdio redirection

[Sukadev Bhattiprolu]

Suppose we create a container and redirect its stdout/stderr as follows:

	lxc-execute -name foo -- /path/to/app > /tmp/xyz.out 2>&1

If we attempt to checkpoint the container 'foo', we fail bc one of the
fds in the application refers to /tmp/xyz.out, which is also in use
outside the container (specifically sys_checkpoint() fails due to the
"alien mount ns" check in ckpt_fill_fname()).

It can be argued, 'foo' is not a strict container (since it shares the
fd with another container).  For this reason, we currently need the
CHECKPOINT_SUBTREE flag in lxc-checkpoint.

We initially thought that solving mount-namespaces will solve this, but
realized that they are both separate problems. Mount-namespace C/R addresses
preserving the mounts within the container and /tmp/xyz.out is outside
the container.

So if an application container needs to redirect stdio as above, we should
either 
	a) disable/ignore the alien-mount-ns check or 

	b) try and start the application something like:

		$ cat /tmp/wrapper
		/path/to/app > /tmp/xyz.out 2>&1

		$ lxc-execute --name foo --  /tmp/wrapper

with the difference being /tmp/xyz.out is now inside the container's /tmp
filesystem rather than in the parent container.

Maybe we can go with approach 'a' above only if CHECKPOINT_SUBTREE is also
set - we had discussed this before and considered it hacky.

Or are there other solutions to this stdio redirection issue ?

Thanks,

Sukadev
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