[PATCH 1/1] proc_flush_task: flush /proc/tid/task/pid when a sub-thread exits

Oleg Nesterov
2009-07-09T17:39:42Z

The exiting sub-thread flushes /proc/pid only, but this doesn't buy
too much: ps and friends mostly use /proc/tid/task/pid.

Remove "if (thread_group_leader())" checks from proc_flush_task() path,
this means we always remove /proc/tid/task/pid dentry on exit, and this
actually matches the comment above proc_flush_task().

The test-case:

static void* tfunc(void *arg)
{
char name[256];

sprintf(name, "/proc/%d/task/%ld/status", getpid(), gettid());
close(open(name, O_RDONLY));

return NULL;
}

int main(void)
{
pthread_t t;

for (;;) {
if (!pthread_create(&t, NULL, &tfunc, NULL))
pthread_join(t, NULL);
}
}

slabtop shows that pid/proc_inode_cache/etc grow quickly and "indefinitely"
until the task is killed or shrink_slab() is called, not good. And the main
thread needs a lot of time to exit.

The same can happen if something like "ps -efL" runs continuously, while
some application spawns short-living threads.

Reported-by: "James M. Leddy" <jleddy@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>

--- WAIT/fs/proc/base.c~PROC_FLUSH_THREAD 2009-06-23 20:16:44.000000000 +0200
+++ WAIT/fs/proc/base.c 2009-07-09 17:56:27.000000000 +0200
@@ -2601,9 +2601,6 @@ static void proc_flush_task_mnt(struct v
dput(dentry);
}

- if (tgid == 0)
- goto out;
-
name.name = buf;
name.len = snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d", tgid);
leader = d_hash_and_lookup(mnt->mnt_root, &name);
@@ -2660,17 +2657,16 @@ out:
void proc_flush_task(struct task_struct *task)
{
int i;
- struct pid *pid, *tgid = NULL;
+ struct pid *pid, *tgid;
struct upid *upid;

pid = task_pid(task);
- if (thread_group_leader(task))
- tgid = task_tgid(task);
+ tgid = task_tgid(task);

for (i = 0; i <= pid->level; i++) {
upid = &pid->numbers[i];
proc_flush_task_mnt(upid->ns->proc_mnt, upid->nr,
- tgid ? tgid->numbers[i].nr : 0);
+ tgid->numbers[i].nr);
}

upid = &pid->numbers[pid->level];