On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 03:52:55PM -0500, Chris Hyser wrote:
> A second complication was a decision that new processes (not threads) do not
> inherit their parents cookie. Thus forking is also not a means to share a
> cookie. Basically with a "from-only" interface, the new task would need to
> be modified to call prctl() itself. From-only also does not allow for
> setting a cookie on an unmodified already running task. This can be fixed by
> providing both a "to" and "from" sharing interface that allows helper
> programs to construct arbitrary configurations from unmodified programs.
Do we really want to inhibit on fork() or would exec() be a better
place? What about those applications that use fork() based workers?
> > Also, how do I set a unique cookie on myself with this interface?
>
> The v10 patch still uses the overloaded v9 mechanism (which as mentioned
> above is if two tasks w/o cookies share a cookie they get a new shared
> unique cookie). Yes, that is clearly an inconsistency and kludgy. The
> mechanism is documented in the docs, but clearly not obvious from the
I've not seen a document so far (also, I'm not one to actually read
documentation, much preferring comments and Changelogs).
> So based on the above, how about we add a "create" to pair with "clear" and
> call it "create" vs "set" since we are creating a unique opaque cookie
> versus setting a particular value. And as mentioned, because one can't
> specify a cookie directly but only thru sharing relationships, we need both
> "to" and "from" to make it completely usable.
>
> So we end up with something like this:
> PR_SCHED_CORE_CREATE -- give yourself a unique
> cookie
> PR_SCHED_CORE_CLEAR -- clear your core sched cookie
> PR_SCHED_CORE_SHARE_FROM <src_task> -- get their cookie for you
> PR_SCHED_CORE_SHARE_TO <dest_task> -- push your cookie to them
I'm still wondering why we need _FROM/_TO. What exactly will we miss
with just _SHARE <pid>?
current arg_task
<none> <none> -EDAFT
<none> <cookie> current gets cookie
<cookie> <none> arg_task gets cookie
<cookie> <cookie> -EDAFTER
(I have a suspicion, but I want to see it spelled out).
Also, do we wants this interface to be able to work on processes? Things
like fcntl(F_SETOWN_EX) allow you to specify a PID type.
> An additional question is should the inheritability of a process' cookie be
> configurable? The current code gives the child process their own unique
> cookie if the parent had a cookie. That is useful in some cases, but many
> other configurations could be made much easier with inheritance.
What was the argument for not following the traditional fork() semantics
and inheriting everything?
