linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v7 0/6] introduce PIDFD

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 for Android: free password hash cracker in your pocket

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

Message-Id: <20250130153236.198664b9a19ccfcdb24f888b@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:32:36 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To: Pedro Falcato <pedro.falcato@...il.com>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>, Christian Brauner
 <christian@...uner.io>, Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>, "Liam R . Howlett"
 <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>, Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
 Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-api@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Oliver Sang
 <oliver.sang@...el.com>, John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>, Tejun Heo
 <tj@...nel.org>, Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>, Michal Koutny
 <mkoutny@...e.com>, Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@...ux.dev>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 0/6] introduce PIDFD_SELF* sentinels

On Thu, 30 Jan 2025 23:10:53 +0000 Pedro Falcato <pedro.falcato@...il.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 10:53 PM Lorenzo Stoakes
> <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com> wrote:
> >
> > > The above code sequence doesn't seem at all onerous.  I'm not
> > > understanding why it's worth altering the kernel to permit this little
> > > shortcut?
> >
> > In practice it adds quite a bit of overhead for something that whatever
> > mechanism is using the pidfd can avoid.
> >
> > It was specifically intended for a real case of utilising
> > process_madvise(), using the newly extended ability to batch _any_
> > madvise() operations for the current process, like:
> >
> >         if (process_madvise(PIDFD_SELF, iovec, 10, MADV_GUARD_INSTALL, 0)) {
> >             ... error handling ...
> >         }
> >
> > vs.
> >
> >         pid_t pid = getpid();
> >         int pidfd = pidfd_open(pid, PIDFD_THREAD);
> >
> >         if (pidfd < 0) {
> >            ... error handling ...
> >         }
> >
> >         if (process_madvise(PIDFD_SELF, iovec, 10, MADV_GUARD_INSTALL, 0)) {
> >            ... cleanup pidfd ...
> >            ... error handling ...
> >         }
> >
> >         ...
> >
> >         ... cleanup pidfd ...
> >
> > So in practice, it's actually a lot more ceremony and noise. Suren has been
> > working with this code in practice and found this to be useful.
> 
> It's also nice to add that people on the libc/allocator side should
> also appreciate skipping pidfd_open's reliability concerns (mostly,
> that RLIMIT_NOFILE Should Not(tm) ever affect thread spawning or a
> malloc[1]). Besides the big syscall reduction and nice speedup, that
> is.
> 
> [1] whether this is the already case is an exercise left to the
> reader, but at the very least we should not add onto existing problems

Thanks.

Could we please get all the above spelled out much more thoroughly in
the [0/n] description (aka Patch Series Sales Brochure)?