Re: init's children list is long and slows reaping children.

Oleg Nesterov
2007-04-11T20:20:14Z

On 04/11, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>
> Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> >On 04/10, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> >
> >>I'm trying to remember what the story is now. There is a nasty
> >>race somewhere with reparenting, a threaded parent setting SIGCHLD to
> >>SIGIGN, and non-default signals that results in an zombie that no one
> >>can wait for and reap. It requires being reparented twice to trigger.
> >
> >reparent_thread:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > /* If we'd notified the old parent about this child's death,
> > * also notify the new parent.
> > */
> > if (!traced && p->exit_state == EXIT_ZOMBIE &&
> > p->exit_signal != -1 && thread_group_empty(p))
> > do_notify_parent(p, p->exit_signal);
> >
> >We notified /sbin/init. If it ignores SIGCHLD, we should release the task.
> >We don't do this.
> >
> >The best fix I believe is to cleanup the
> >forget_original_parent/reparent_thread
> >interaction and factor out this "exit_state == EXIT_ZOMBIE && exit_signal
> >== -1"
> >checks.
> >
> As long as the original parent is preserved for getppid(). There are
> programs out there which communicate between the parent and child with
> signals, and if the original parent dies, it undesirable to have the
> child getppid() and start sending signals to a program not expecting
> them. Invites undefined behavior.

Sorry, can't understand.

If p->exit_signal == -1 after do_notify_parent() above, the task is completely
dead. Nobody can release it, we should do this (if EXIT_ZOMBIE). At this point
"p" was already re-parented, but this (and getppid) doesn't matter at all.

OK. Most likely you meant something else. Could you clarify?

Oleg.