Date:   Fri, 7 Aug 2020 11:47:57 +0300
From:   Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@...tuozzo.com>
To:     Andrei Vagin <avagin@...il.com>, adobriyan@...il.com
Cc:     "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
        viro@...iv.linux.org.uk, davem@...emloft.net,
        akpm@...ux-foundation.org, christian.brauner@...ntu.com,
        areber@...hat.com, serge@...lyn.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        Pavel Tikhomirov <ptikhomirov@...tuozzo.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/23] proc: Introduce /proc/namespaces/ directory to
 expose namespaces lineary

On 06.08.2020 11:05, Andrei Vagin wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 03, 2020 at 01:03:17PM +0300, Kirill Tkhai wrote:
>> On 31.07.2020 01:13, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>> Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@...tuozzo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 30.07.2020 17:34, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>>>> Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@...tuozzo.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Currently, there is no a way to list or iterate all or subset of namespaces
>>>>>> in the system. Some namespaces are exposed in /proc/[pid]/ns/ directories,
>>>>>> but some also may be as open files, which are not attached to a process.
>>>>>> When a namespace open fd is sent over unix socket and then closed, it is
>>>>>> impossible to know whether the namespace exists or not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, even if namespace is exposed as attached to a process or as open file,
>>>>>> iteration over /proc/*/ns/* or /proc/*/fd/* namespaces is not fast, because
>>>>>> this multiplies at tasks and fds number.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am very dubious about this.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have been avoiding exactly this kind of interface because it can
>>>>> create rather fundamental problems with checkpoint restart.
>>>>
>>>> restart/restore :)
>>>>
>>>>> You do have some filtering and the filtering is not based on current.
>>>>> Which is good.
>>>>>
>>>>> A view that is relative to a user namespace might be ok.    It almost
>>>>> certainly does better as it's own little filesystem than as an extension
>>>>> to proc though.
>>>>>
>>>>> The big thing we want to ensure is that if you migrate you can restore
>>>>> everything.  I don't see how you will be able to restore these files
>>>>> after migration.  Anything like this without having a complete
>>>>> checkpoint/restore story is a non-starter.
>>>>
>>>> There is no difference between files in /proc/namespaces/ directory and /proc/[pid]/ns/.
>>>>
>>>> CRIU can restore open files in /proc/[pid]/ns, the same will be with /proc/namespaces/ files.
>>>> As a person who worked deeply for pid_ns and user_ns support in CRIU, I don't see any
>>>> problem here.
>>>
>>> An obvious diffference is that you are adding the inode to the inode to
>>> the file name.  Which means that now you really do have to preserve the
>>> inode numbers during process migration.
>>>
>>> Which means now we have to do all of the work to make inode number
>>> restoration possible.  Which means now we need to have multiple
>>> instances of nsfs so that we can restore inode numbers.
>>>
>>> I think this is still possible but we have been delaying figuring out
>>> how to restore inode numbers long enough that may be actual technical
>>> problems making it happen.
>>
>> Yeah, this matters. But it looks like here is not a dead end. We just need
>> change the names the namespaces are exported to particular fs and to support
>> rename().
>>
>> Before introduction a principally new filesystem type for this, can't
>> this be solved in current /proc?
> 
> do you mean to introduce names for namespaces which users will be able
> to change? By default, this can be uuid.

Yes, I mean this.

Currently I won't give a final answer about UUID, but I planned to show some
default names, which based on namespace type and inode num. Completely custom
names for any /proc by default will waste too much memory.

So, I think the good way will be:

1)Introduce a function, which returns a hash/uuid based on ino, ns type and some static
random seed, which is generated on boot;

2)Use the hash/uuid as default names in newly create /proc/namespaces: pid-{hash/uuid(ino, "pid")}

3)Allow rename, and allocate space only for renamed names.

Maybe 2 and 3 will be implemented as shrinkable dentries and non-shrinkable.

> And I have a suggestion about the structure of /proc/namespaces/.
> 
> Each namespace is owned by one of user namespaces. Maybe it makes sense
> to group namespaces by their user-namespaces?
> 
> /proc/namespaces/
>                  user
>                  mnt-X
>                  mnt-Y
>                  pid-X
>                  uts-Z
>                  user-X/
>                         user
>                         mnt-A
>                         mnt-B
>                         user-C
>                         user-C/
>                                user
>                  user-Y/
>                         user

Hm, I don't think that user namespace is a generic key value for everybody.
For generic people tasks a user namespace is just a namespace among another
namespace types. For me it will look a bit strage to iterate some user namespaces
to build container net topology.

> Do we try to invent cgroupfs for namespaces?

Could you clarify your thought?

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