Re: [Y2038] [PATCH 04/11] posix timers:Introduce the 64bit methods with timespec64 type for k_clock structure

Thomas Gleixner
2015-04-22T13:37:47Z

On Wed, 22 Apr 2015, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 April 2015 10:45:23 Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Apr 2015, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>
> > So we could save one translation step if we implement new syscalls
> > which have a scalar nsec interface instead of the timespec/timeval
> > cruft and let user space do the translation to whatever it wants.
> >
> > So
> >
> > sys_clock_nanosleep(const clockid_t which_clock, int flags,
> > const struct timespec __user *expires,
> > struct timespec __user *reminder)
> >
> > would get the new syscall variant:
> >
> > sys_clock_nanosleep_ns(const clockid_t which_clock, int flags,
> > const s64 expires, s64 __user *reminder)
>
> As you might expect, there are a number of complications with this
> approach:
>
> - John Stultz likes to point out that it's easier to do one change
> at a time, so extending the interface to 64-bit has less potential
> of breaking things than a more fundamental change. I think it's
> useful to drop a lot of the syscalls when a more modern version
> is around (e.g. let libc implement usleep and nanosleep through
> clock_nanosleep), but keep the syscalls as close to the known-working
> 64-bit versions as we can.

Well. I don't see a massive risk when implementing
e.g. usleep/nanosleep & al with clock_nanosleep_ns().

> - The inode timestamp related syscalls (stat, utimes and variants
> thereof) require the full range of time64_t and cannot use ktime_t.

I'm aware that there are a lot of interfaces which cannot use
ktime_t. That's fine.

> - converting between timespec types of different size is cheap,
> converting timespec to ktime_t is still relatively cheap, but
> converting ktime_t to timespec is rather expensive (at least eight
> 32-bit multiplies, plus a few shifts and additions if you don't
> have 64-bit arithmetic).

Right. That's what I said vs. gettime().

> - ioctls that pass a timespec need to keep doing that or would require
> a source-level change in user space instead of recompiling.

No argument here.

> We should probably look at it separately for each syscall. It's
> quite possible that we find a number of them for which it helps
> and others for which it hurts, so we need to see the big pictures.

Agreed.

> There are also a few other calls that will never need 64-bit
> time_t because the range is limited by the need to only ever
> pass relative timeouts (select, poll, io_getevents, recvmmsg,
> clock_getres, rt_sigtimedwait, sched_rr_get_interval, getrusage,
> waitid, semtimedop, sysinfo), so we could actually leave them
> using a 32-bit structure and have the libc do the conversion.

Indeed.

> I've started a list of affected syscalls at
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HCYwHXxs48TsTb6IGUduNjQnmfRvMPzCN6T_0YiQwis/edit?usp=sharing
>
> Still adding more calls and description, let me know if you want edit
> permissions.

Only if you have a strong backup system for this file. My GUI foo is
rather limited :)

Thanks,

tglx