Re: [PATCH v4] signal: add taskfd_send_signal() syscall

Daniel Colascione
2018-12-06T16:17:18Z

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 7:02 AM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>
> Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io> writes:
>
> > The kill() syscall operates on process identifiers (pid). After a process
> > has exited its pid can be reused by another process. If a caller sends a
> > signal to a reused pid it will end up signaling the wrong process. This
> > issue has often surfaced and there has been a push [1] to address this
> > problem.
> >
> > This patch uses file descriptors (fd) from proc/<pid> as stable handles on
> > struct pid. Even if a pid is recycled the handle will not change. The fd
> > can be used to send signals to the process it refers to.
> > Thus, the new syscall taskfd_send_signal() is introduced to solve this
> > problem. Instead of pids it operates on process fds (taskfd).
>
> I am not yet thrilled with the taskfd naming.

Both the old and new names were fine. Do you want to suggest a name at
this point? You can't just say "I don't like this. Guess again"
forever.

> Is there any plan to support sesssions and process groups?

Such a thing could be added with flags in the future. Why complicate this patch?

> I am concerned about using kill_pid_info. It does this:
>
>
> rcu_read_lock();
> p = pid_task(pid, PIDTYPE_PID);
> if (p)
> error = group_send_sig_info(sig, info, p, PIDTYPE_TGID);
> rcu_read_unlock();
>
> That pid_task(PIDTYPE_PID) is fine for existing callers that need bug
> compatibility. For new interfaces I would strongly prefer pid_task(PIDTYPE_TGID).

What is the bug that PIDTYPE_PID preserves?