Hi Michael, Cc'ing Manfred. On Mon, 2014-09-29 at 11:10 +0200, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > Hello Doug, David, > > I think you two were the last ones to make significant > changes to the semantics of the files in /proc/sys/fs/mqueue, > so I wonder if you (or anyone else who is willing) might > take a look at the man page text below that I've written > (for the mq_overview(7) page) to describe past and current > reality, and let me know of improvements of corrections. Over the years posix mqueues have increasingly become a mess *sigh* :-/ Thanks for doing this and untangling some of the historic changes. > From mq_overview(7) draft: > > /proc interfaces > The following interfaces can be used to limit the amount of ker‐ > nel memory consumed by POSIX message queues and to set the > default attributes for new message queues: > > /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_default (since Linux 3.5) > This file defines the value used for a new queue's > mq_maxmsg setting when the queue is created with a call to > mq_open(3) where attr is specified as NULL. The default > value for this file is 10. The minimum and maximum are as > for /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max. If msg_default exceeds > msg_max, a new queue's default mq_maxmsg value is capped > to the msg_max limit. I think rephrasing this would read easier. Basically the behavior is this: info->attr.mq_maxmsg = min(ipc_ns->mq_msg_max, ipc_ns->mq_msg_default); Something like: "a new queue's default mq_maxmsg value will be the smallest of msg_default and msg_max" > Up until Linux 2.6.28, the default > mq_maxmsg was 10; from Linux 2.6.28 to Linux 3.4, the > default was the value defined for the msg_max limit. > > /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max > This file can be used to view and change the ceiling value > for the maximum number of messages in a queue. This value > acts as a ceiling on the attr->mq_maxmsg argument given to > mq_open(3). The default value for msg_max is 10. The > minimum value is 1 (10 in kernels before 2.6.28). The > upper limit is HARD_MSGMAX. The msg_max limit is ignored > for privileged processes (CAP_SYS_RESOURCE), but the > HARD_MSGMAX ceiling is nevertheless imposed. Note that the HARD_MSGMAX check is done *only* for privileged processes, regular processes only check against namespace values. This is a pretty fundamental difference. The same goes of course for msgsize: if (capable(CAP_SYS_RESOURCE)) { if (attr->mq_maxmsg > HARD_MSGMAX || attr->mq_msgsize > HARD_MSGSIZEMAX) return -EINVAL; } else { if (attr->mq_maxmsg > ipc_ns->mq_msg_max || attr->mq_msgsize > ipc_ns->mq_msgsize_max) return -EINVAL; } > The definition of HARD_MSGMAX has changed across kernel > versions: > > * Up to Linux 2.6.32: 131072 / sizeof(void *) > > * Linux 2.6.33 to 3.4: (32768 * sizeof(void *) / 4) > > * Since Linux 3.5: 65,536 > > /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_default (since Linux 3.5) You might want to mention the units (bytes) when refering to limits. > This file defines the value used for a new queue's mq_msg‐ > size setting when the queue is created with a call to > mq_open(3) where attr is specified as NULL. The default > value for this file is 8192. The minimum and maximum are > as for /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max. If msg‐ > size_default exceeds msgsize_max, a new queue's default > mq_msgsize value is capped to the msgsize_max limit. Up > until Linux 2.6.28, the default mq_msgsize was 8192; from > Linux 2.6.28 to Linux 3.4, the default was the value > defined for the msgsize_max limit. > > /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max Ditto here. > This file can be used to view and change the ceiling on > the maximum message size. This value acts as a ceiling on > the attr->mq_msgsize argument given to mq_open(3). The > default value for msgsize_max is 8192 bytes. The minimum > value is 128 (8192 in kernels before 2.6.28). The upper > limit for msgsize_max has varied across kernel versions: > > * Before Linux 2.6.28, the upper limit is INT_MAX. > > * From Linux 2.6.28 to 3.4, the limit is 1,048,576. > > * Since Linux 3.5, the limit is 16,777,216 (HARD_MSGSIZE‐ > MAX). > The msgsize_max limit is ignored for privileged process > (CAP_SYS_RESOURCE), but, since Linux 3.5, the HARD_MSG‐ > SIZEMAX ceiling is enforced for privileged processes. > > /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/queues_max > This file can be used to view and change the system-wide > limit on the number of message queues that can be created. > The default value for queues_max is 256. The semantics of > this limit have changed across kernel versions as follows: > > * Before Linux 3.5, this limit could be changed to any > value in the range 0 to INT_MAX, but privileged pro‐ > cesses (CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) can exceed the limit. > > * Since Linux 3.5, there is a ceiling for this limit of > 1024 (HARD_QUEUESMAX). Privileged processes > (CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) can exceed the queues_max limit, but > the HARD_QUEUESMAX limit is enforced even for privi‐ > leged processes. > > * Starting with Linux 3.14, the HARD_QUEUESMAX ceiling is > removed: no ceiling is imposed on the queues_max limit, > and privileged processes (CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) can exceed > the limit. Given that this was treated as a bug that breaks user-space, I don't think we really want to document the behavior between 3.5 and 3.14 (all three bullets). Stable kernels back to 3.5 now have the default behavior, so its as nothing ever changed(?). Now, if you explicitly want to document such bug, I would agree, but just not mentioning it as intentional differences in behavior. Does that make sense? Thanks, Davidlohr -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html