linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4] signal: add taskfd_send

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Message-ID: <b0e946bcac12358841c9a99017da819b00794d9c.camel@bitron.ch>
Date:   Thu, 06 Dec 2018 13:45:39 +0100
From:   Jürg Billeter <j@...ron.ch>
To:     Florian Weimer <fweimer@...hat.com>,
        Christian Brauner <christian@...uner.io>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
        luto@...nel.org, arnd@...db.de, ebiederm@...ssion.com,
        serge@...lyn.com, jannh@...gle.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
        oleg@...hat.com, cyphar@...har.com, viro@...iv.linux.org.uk,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, dancol@...gle.com,
        timmurray@...gle.com, linux-man@...r.kernel.org,
        keescook@...omium.org, tglx@...utronix.de, x86@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4] signal: add taskfd_send_signal() syscall

On Thu, 2018-12-06 at 13:30 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Christian Brauner:
> 
> > /* zombies */
> > Zombies can be signaled just as any other process. No special error will be
> > reported since a zombie state is an unreliable state (cf. [3]).
> 
> I still disagree with this analysis.  If I know that the target process
> is still alive, and it is not, this is a persistent error condition
> which can be reliably reported.  Given that someone might send SIGKILL
> to the process behind my back, detecting this error condition could be
> useful.

As I understand it, kill() behaves the same way. I think it's good that
this new syscall keeps the behavior as close as possible to kill().
E.g., this would allow emulating kill() (or a higher level API
equivalent) on top of taskfds without subtle differences in behavior.

As the new syscall supports flags, we could consider introducing a flag
that changes the behavior in the zombie case. However, I think that
should be a separate discussion (after merge of the syscall) and the
default behavior makes sense as is.

Jürg