From: Sargun Dhillon <sargun@xxxxxxxxx> [TO += Serge] Hi Sargun, Serge! Sargun, I've slightly changed your patch, to keep the historical information that in old versions of Linux this restriction was in place. I also cleaned up the example program a little bit, and fixed the formatting mistake I mentioned. See scissor patch below. However, reading the Linux commit that changed this, I had some doubts. I've added Serge, in case he can remember the details. Serge, I see that the commit message for (Linux) 1f7f4dde5c94 quotes some email of yours, and mentions that the commit fixes a regression. So my doubt is: was this restriction in place before v3.13 as a stable thing, or was it only accidentally introduced temporarily and soon fixed? How should we document it? Cheers, Alex ---8<----- It appears like the documentation is based on out of date information in regards to using CLONE_NEWPID and CLONE_PARENT together. Since Linux v3.13, this restriction has been lifted. See commit 1f7f4dde5c94 ("fork: Allow CLONE_PARENT after setns(CLONE_NEWPID)"). For example, in this test program, one can see that it works: #include <assert.h> #include <err.h> #include <linux/sched.h> #include <sched.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <sys/syscall.h> #include <unistd.h> static pid_t sys_clone3(struct clone_args *args); int main(void) { int ret; struct clone_args args = { .flags = CLONE_PARENT | CLONE_NEWPID, }; printf("main program: pid: %d, and ppid: %d\n", getpid(), getppid()); ret = sys_clone3(&args); switch (ret) { case -1: err(EXIT_FAILURE, "clone3"); case 0: printf("child: pid: %d, and ppid: %d\n", getpid(), getppid()); exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); default: exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } } static pid_t sys_clone3(struct clone_args *args) { fflush(stdout); fflush(stderr); return syscall(SYS_clone3, args, sizeof(*args)); } This test program (successfully) outputs: # ./a.out main program: pid: 34663, and ppid: 34662 child: pid: 1, and ppid: 0 Cowritten-by: Sargun Dhillon <sargun@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Serge Hallyn <serge@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: John Watts <contact@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@xxxxxxxxxx> --- man2/clone.2 | 8 +++++--- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/man2/clone.2 b/man2/clone.2 index b91b71831..225fef86d 100644 --- a/man2/clone.2 +++ b/man2/clone.2 @@ -736,9 +736,11 @@ .SS The flags mask can employ .BR CLONE_NEWPID . This flag can't be specified in conjunction with -.B CLONE_THREAD -or -.BR CLONE_PARENT . +.BR CLONE_THREAD . +Before Linux 3.13, +this flag couldn't be specified in conjunction with +.B CLONE_PARENT +either. .TP .B CLONE_NEWUSER (This flag first became meaningful for -- 2.40.1