linux-kernel - Re: RFC: PTRACE_SEIZE needs API cleanup?

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Date:	Tue, 6 Sep 2011 03:05:19 +0200
From:	Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@...glemail.com>
To:	"Indan Zupancic" <indan@....nu>
Cc:	"Denys Vlasenko" <dvlasenk@...hat.com>,
	"Oleg Nesterov" <oleg@...hat.com>, "Tejun Heo" <tj@...nel.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: RFC: PTRACE_SEIZE needs API cleanup?

On Monday 05 September 2011 19:44, Indan Zupancic wrote:
> On Mon, September 5, 2011 16:06, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> > In case you meant that "if we request group-stop notifications by using
> > __WALL | WSTOPPED, and we get group-stop notification, and we do
> > PTRACE_CONT, then task does not run (it sits in group-stop until SIGCONT
> > or death)", then we have a problem: gdb can't use this interface, it
> > needs to be able to restart the thread (only one thread, not all of
> > them, so sending SIGCONT is not ok!) from the group-stop. Yes, it's
> > weird, but it's the real requirement from gdb users.
> [...]
> > SIGCONT's side effect of waking up from group-stop can't be blocked.
> > SIGCONT always wakes up all threads in thread group.
> > Using SIGCONT to control tracee will race with SIGCONTs from other
> > sources.
> >
> > This makes SIGCONT a too coarse instrument for the job.
> [...]
> > Yes... until gdb will want to give user a choice after SIGSTOP: continue
> > to sit in group-stop until SIGCONT (wasn't possible until
> > PTRACE_LISTEN), or continue executing (gdb's current behavior if user
> > uses "continue" command). Therefore, gdb needs a way to do both.
> 
> Having thought a bit more about this, I think this is less of a problem
> than it seems, because for a group stop we get a ptrace event for each
> task, and this should be true for SIGCONT as well. So gdb could also
> always let the group stop happen, and only when prompted to do so by
> a user, continue one thread by sending SIGCONT and letting all the other
> threads hang in trapped state.

Won't work. SIGCONT unpauses all threads in the thread group,
and _then_ it is delivered to one of the threads. You can block
or ignore it, yes, but it is too late: the unpausing already happened,
and blocking/ignoring will only affect SIGCONT handler execution,
if the program has one.

-- 
vda
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