Date:	Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:46:16 -0500
From:	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@...ibm.com>
To:	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
Cc:	Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Oren Laadan <orenl@...columbia.edu>,
	Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
	Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...nvz.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	mikew@...gle.com, mingo@...e.hu, hpa@...or.com,
	Containers <containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
	sukadev@...ibm.com, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC][v4][PATCH 0/7] clone_with_pids() system call

Quoting Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@...ssion.com):
> Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:
> 
> > Eric W. Biederman [ebiederm@...ssion.com] wrote:
> > | Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@...ux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:
> > | 
> > | > === NEW CLONE() SYSTEM CALL:
> > | >
> > | > To support application checkpoint/restart, a task must 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.
> > | >
> > | > This patchset implements a new system call, clone_with_pids() that lets a
> > | > process specify the pids of the child process.
> > | >
> > | > Patches 1 through 5 are helpers and we believe they are needed for application
> > | > restart, regardless of the kernel implementation of application restart.
> > | 
> > | I'm not very impressed.
> > | 
> > | - static int alloc_pidmap(struct pid_namespace *pid_ns)
> > | + static int alloc_pidmap(struct pid_namespace *pid_ns, int pid_max, int last_pid)
> > | 
> > | Do that.
> > | 
> > | That is pass in pid_max and last_pid, and you don't have to do weird
> > | things in alloc_pidmap, and no set_pidmap is needed.
> >
> > But last_pid is from the pid_ns. Do you mean to have alloc_pidmap()
> > take a pid_min and pid_max and when choosing a specific pid, have
> > pid_min == pid_max == target_pid ?
> 
> Yes. It already takes a pid_min and a pid_max from the environment.
> I guess the pid_min is RESERVED_PIDS by default.
> 
> > | No changes to copy_process are needed it already takes a struct pid
> > | argument.
> >
> >
> > I see your point about passing in both 'struct pid*' and target_pids[].
> > But in the common case the struct pid passed into copy_process() is
> > NULL - allocating pid in do_fork() would significantly alter the
> > existing control flow - no ? alloc_pid() assumes any new pid namespace
> > has been created - in copy_namespaces(). Moving the alloc_pid() to
> > do_fork() would require parsing clone_flags in do_fork() and pulling
> > pid namespace code out of copy_namespaces().
> 
> Why change do_fork?
> 
> > | I haven't been following closely what is gained by having a clone_with_pids
> > | syscall?  
> >
> > When restarting an application from a checkpoint, the application must get
> > the same pid it had at the time of checkpoint. clone_with_pids() would be
> > used during restart so the child can be created with a specific set of pids.
> 
> That part I understand.  What I don't understand is why have that one part be
> special and have user space do the work?

How would this be used then?  Let's say I'm recreating a process tree
with two nested pid namespaces.  so just using clone(CLONE_NEWPID) we'd
have P{500} creates P{1501,1} which creates P{1502,1,2} which creates
P{1502,2,3} (1502 in top namespace, 2 in child ns, 3 in lowest pid ns).
But now we want to create P{X, 27, 953} (i.e. X can be anything).  How
do we specify that for pidns 2 we want pid_min=pid_max=27, and for
pidns 3 pid_min=pid_max=953?

-serge
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