linux-kernel - Re: [RFC v6][PATCH 0/9] Kernel based checkpoint/restart

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Message-Id: <1223559246.11830.23.camel@nimitz>
Date:	Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:34:06 -0700
From:	Dave Hansen <dave@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	Oren Laadan <orenl@...columbia.edu>, jeremy@...p.org,
	arnd@...db.de, containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC v6][PATCH 0/9] Kernel based checkpoint/restart

On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 15:17 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Dave Hansen <dave@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote
> > On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 14:46 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > i'm wondering about the following productization aspect: it would be 
> > > very useful to applications and users if they knew whether it is safe to 
> > > checkpoint a given app. I.e. whether that app has any state that cannot 
> > > be stored/restored yet.
> > 
> > Absolutely!
> > 
> > My first inclination was to do this at checkpoint time: detect and 
> > tell users why an app or container can't actually be checkpointed.  
> > But, if I get you right, you're talking about something that happens 
> > more during the runtime of the app than during the checkpoint.  This 
> > sounds like a wonderful approach to me, and much better than what I 
> > was thinking of.
> > 
> > What kind of mechanism do you have in mind?
> > 
> > int sys_remap_file_pages(...)
> > {
> >       ...
> >       oh_crap_we_dont_support_this_yet(current);
> > }
> > 
> > Then the oh_crap..() function sets a task flag or something?
> 
> yeah, something like that. A key aspect of it is that is has to be very 
> low-key on the source code level - we dont want to sprinkle the kernel 
> with anything ugly. Perhaps something pretty explicit:
> 
>   current->flags |= PF_NOCR;

Am I miscounting, or are we out of these suckers on 32-bit platforms?

> as we do the same thing today for certain facilities:
> 
>   current->flags |= PF_NOFREEZE;
> 
> you probably want to hide it behind:
> 
>   set_current_nocr();

Yeah, that all looks reasonable.  Letting this be a dynamic thing where
you can move back and forth between the two states would make a lot of
sense too.  But, for now, I guess it can be a one-way trip.

I'll cook something up real fast.

-- Dave

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