> The kernel APIs for all this aren't really good > though, and I always was reluctant to check for PF_KTHREAD, as that > flag is neither documented for userspace, nor available in any > userspace-accessible headers. However, I wanted to tighten this a bit, > and hence we now define the flag in our own code, as it appeared to me > otherwise there was no chance to ever make this fully robust.
PF_KTHREAD was introduced in 2.6.27 and its value appears to be stable since then. I think it should be retroactively declared part of ABI otherwise people will continue to rediscover that all other means do not work. Empty /proc/*/exe is second best option for systemd and it's only one system call.
