Re: [PATCH v1 1/2] pid: add pidfd_open()

[Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/17, Aleksa Sarai wrote:
>
> On 2019-05-16, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On 05/17, Aleksa Sarai wrote:
> > > On 2019-05-16, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > On 05/16, Christian Brauner wrote:
> > > > > With the introduction of pidfds through CLONE_PIDFD it is possible to
> > > > > created pidfds at process creation time.
> > > >
> > > > Now I am wondering why do we need CLONE_PIDFD, you can just do
> > > >
> > > > 	pid = fork();
> > > > 	pidfd_open(pid);
> > >
> > > While the race window would be exceptionally short, there is the
> > > possibility that the child will die
> >
> > Yes,
> >
> > > and their pid will be recycled
> > > before you do pidfd_open().
> >
> > No.
> >
> > Unless the caller's sub-thread does wait() before pidfd_open(), of course.
> > Or unless you do signal(SIGCHILD, SIG_IGN).
>
> What about CLONE_PARENT?

I should have mentioned CLONE_PARENT ;)

Of course in this case the child can be reaped before pidfd_open(). But how often
do you or other people use clone(CLONE_PARENT) ? not to mention you can trivially
eliminate/detect this race if you really need this.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that CLONE_PIDFD is a bad idea.

But to me pidfd_open() is much more useful. Say, as a perl programmer I can easily
use pidfd_open(), but not CLONE_PIDFD.

Oleg.