Re: [PATCH 6/6] clone4: Introduce new CLONE_FD flag to get task exit notification via fd

[Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:34 PM,  <josh@joshtriplett.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 03:28:26PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:20 PM,  <josh@joshtriplett.org> wrote:
>> > On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 02:34:58PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> >> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:57 PM,  <josh@joshtriplett.org> wrote:
>> >> > A process launching a new process with CLONE_FD is explicitly requesting
>> >> > that the process be automatically reaped without any other process
>> >> > having to wait on it.  The task needs to not become a zombie, because
>> >> > otherwise, it'll show up in waitpid(-1, ...) calls in the parent
>> >> > process, which would break the ability to use this to completely
>> >> > encapsulate process management within a library and not interfere with
>> >> > the parent's process handling via SIGCHLD and wait{pid,3,4}.
>> >>
>> >> Wouldn't the correct behavior be to keep it alive as a zombie but
>> >> *not* show it in waitpid, etc?
>> >
>> > That's a significant change to the semantics of waitpid.  And then
>> > someone would still need to wait on the process, which we'd like to
>> > avoid.  (We don't want to have magic "reap on read(2)" semantics,
>> > because among other things, what if we add a means in the future to get
>> > an additional file descriptor corresponding to an existing process?)
>>
>> Do we not already have a state "dead, successfully waited on by
>> parent, but still around because ptraced"?  If not, shouldn't we?
>> Isn't that what PTRACE_SEIZE does?  Or am I just confused?
>
> I don't think that affects the task's exit_state though.
>

That's a question for Oleg.  I have no idea how ptrace is actually implemented.

--Andy

> - Josh Triplett



-- 
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC