linux-kernel - Re: ptrace.2: PTRACE_KILL needs a stopped process too

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Message-Id: <201205091109.35637.vapier@gentoo.org>
Date:	Wed, 9 May 2012 11:09:33 -0400
From:	Mike Frysinger <vapier@...too.org>
To:	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>
Cc:	"Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@...il.com>,
	pacman@...h.dhis.org, "linux-man" <linux-man@...r.kernel.org>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@...hat.com>,
	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	Jan Kratochvil <jan.kratochvil@...hat.com>,
	Pedro Alves <palves@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: ptrace.2: PTRACE_KILL needs a stopped process too

On Sunday 22 April 2012 16:04:59 Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> On 04/23, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> > [widening CC]
> 
> add more CC's
> 
> > The man page says "For requests other than PTRACE_KILL,
> 
> Argh, PTRACE_KILL again.
> 
> You know, I simply do not know what it was supposed to do. I can only
> see what the code actually does.
> 
> > the child process
> > must be stopped."
> 
> Yes and no.
> 
> Yes, ptrace(PTRACE_KILL) "succeeds" even if the tracee is not stopped.
> 
> No, it has no effect if the tracee is not stopped.
> 
> All I can say is: PTRACE_KILL should never exist. If you want to kill
> the tracee, you can do kill(SIGKILL).
> 
> Roughly, ptrace(PTRACE_KILL) is equal to ptrace(PTRACE_CONT, SIGKILL)
> except it always returns 0.
> 
> > If the man page is describing actual intended kernel behavior, then it's
> > a fairly long-standing kernel bug.
> 
> Perhaps. May be it should simply do kill(SIGKILL), but then it is not
> clear why do we have PTRACE_KILL. And once again, I was never able to
> understand the supposed behaviour.
> 
> Personally, I think we should fix the documentation. And imho the only
> possible fix is to add this note: do not ever use PTRACE_KILL.

probably not that big of a deal, but the reason i like using 
ptrace(PTRACE_KILL) over a raw kill() is that you are less likely to kill the 
wrong process by accident.  maybe not that big of a deal in practice though.
-mike

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