On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 04:56:08PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
Hi Christian, David,
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 4:00 PM Christian Brauner <christian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This adds the pidfd_open() syscall. It allows a caller to retrieve pollable
pidfds for a process which did not get created via CLONE_PIDFD, i.e. for a
process that is created via traditional fork()/clone() calls that is only
referenced by a PID:
int pidfd = pidfd_open(1234, 0);
ret = pidfd_send_signal(pidfd, SIGSTOP, NULL, 0);
With the introduction of pidfds through CLONE_PIDFD it is possible to
created pidfds at process creation time.
However, a lot of processes get created with traditional PID-based calls
such as fork() or clone() (without CLONE_PIDFD). For these processes a
caller can currently not create a pollable pidfd. This is a huge problem
for Android's low memory killer (LMK) and service managers such as systemd.
Both are examples of tools that want to make use of pidfds to get reliable
notification of process exit for non-parents (pidfd polling) and race-free
signal sending (pidfd_send_signal()). They intend to switch to this API for
process supervision/management as soon as possible. Having no way to get
pollable pidfds from PID-only processes is one of the biggest blockers for
them in adopting this api. With pidfd_open() making it possible to retrieve
pidfd for PID-based processes we enable them to adopt this api.
In line with Arnd's recent changes to consolidate syscall numbers across
architectures, I have added the pidfd_open() syscall to all architectures
at the same time.
+428 common pidfd_open sys_pidfd_open
This number conflicts with "[PATCH 4/4] uapi: Wire up the mount API
syscalls on non-x86 arches", which is requested to be included before
rc1.
Yep, already spotted this thanks to Arnd! Will change the syscall
numbers.
Thanks!
Christian
Note that none of this is part of linux-next.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
