linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] prctl: add PR_{SET,GET}_CHILD_REAPER to allow simple process supervision

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:10:10 -0700
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@...y.org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Lennart Poettering <lennart@...ttering.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] prctl: add PR_{SET,GET}_CHILD_REAPER to allow simple
 process supervision

On Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:01:44 +0200
Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@...y.org> wrote:

> From: Lennart Poettering <lennart@...ttering.net>
> Subject: prctl: add PR_{SET,GET}_CHILD_REAPER to allow simple process supervision
> 
> Userspace service managers/supervisors need to track their started
> services. Many services daemonize by double-forking and get implicitely
> re-parented to PID 1. The process manager will no longer be able to
> receive the SIGCHLD signals for them.
> 
> With this prctl, a service manager can mark itself as a sort of
> 'sub-init' process, able to stay as the parent process for all processes
> created by the started services. All SIGCHLD signals will be delivered
> to the service manager.
> 
> As a side effect, the relevant parent PID information does not get lost
> by a double-fork, which results in a more elaborate process tree and 'ps'
> output.
> 
> This is orthogonal to PID namespaces. PID namespaces are isolated
> from each other, while a service management process usually requires
> the serices to live in the same namespace, to be able to talk to each
> other.
> 
> Users of this will be the systemd per-user instance, which provides
> init-like functionality for the user's login session and D-Bus, which
> activates bus services on on-demand. Both will need init-like capabilities
> to be able to properly keep track of the services they start.
> 

Interesting patch.  I can't immediately see any nasty effects from it..

Did you consider using the existing taskstats capability for this?

The comment block over find_new_reaper() is now incomplete.  Please
update it?

prctl(2) has a manpage.  What's the plan for updating it?

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/