[PATCH 1/2] clone3: add CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND

Christian Brauner
2019-10-10T13:35:37Z

Reset all signal handlers of the child not set to SIG_IGN to SIG_DFL.
Mutually exclusive with CLONE_SIGHAND to not disturb other thread's
signal handler.

In the spirit of closer cooperation between glibc developers and kernel
developers (cf. [2]) this patchset came out of a discussion on the glibc
mailing list for improving posix_spawn() (cf. [1], [3], [4]). Kernel
support for this feature has been explicitly requested by glibc and I
see no reason not to help them with this.

The child helper process on Linux posix_spawn must ensure that no signal
handlers are enabled, so the signal disposition must be either SIG_DFL
or SIG_IGN. However, it requires a sigprocmask to obtain the current
signal mask and at least _NSIG sigaction calls to reset the signal
handlers for each posix_spawn call or complex state tracking that might
lead to data corruption in glibc. Adding this flags lets glibc avoid
these problems.

[1]: https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2019-10/msg00149.html
[3]: https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2019-10/msg00158.html
[4]: https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2019-10/msg00160.html
[2]: https://lwn.net/Articles/799331/
'[...] by asking for better cooperation with the C-library projects
in general. They should be copied on patches containing ABI
changes, for example. I noted that there are often times where
C-library developers wish the kernel community had done things
differently; how could those be avoided in the future? Members of
the audience suggested that more glibc developers should perhaps
join the linux-api list. The other suggestion was to "copy Florian
on everything".'
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Cc: libc-alpha@sourceware.org
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
---
include/uapi/linux/sched.h | 3 +++
kernel/fork.c | 11 ++++++++++-
2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/sched.h b/include/uapi/linux/sched.h
index 99335e1f4a27..c583720f689f 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/sched.h
@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@
#define CLONE_NEWNET 0x40000000 /* New network namespace */
#define CLONE_IO 0x80000000 /* Clone io context */

+/* Flags for the clone3() syscall */
+#define CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND 0x100000000ULL /* Clear any signal handler and reset to SIG_DFL. */
+
#ifndef __ASSEMBLY__
/**
* struct clone_args - arguments for the clone3 syscall
diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index 1f6c45f6a734..661f8d1f3881 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -1517,6 +1517,11 @@ static int copy_sighand(unsigned long clone_flags, struct task_struct *tsk)
spin_lock_irq(&current->sighand->siglock);
memcpy(sig->action, current->sighand->action, sizeof(sig->action));
spin_unlock_irq(&current->sighand->siglock);
+
+ /* Reset all signal handler not set to SIG_IGN to SIG_DFL. */
+ if (clone_flags & CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND)
+ flush_signal_handlers(tsk, 0);
+
return 0;
}

@@ -2567,7 +2572,7 @@ static bool clone3_args_valid(const struct kernel_clone_args *kargs)
* All lower bits of the flag word are taken.
* Verify that no other unknown flags are passed along.
*/
- if (kargs->flags & ~CLONE_LEGACY_FLAGS)
+ if (kargs->flags & ~(CLONE_LEGACY_FLAGS | CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND))
return false;

/*
@@ -2577,6 +2582,10 @@ static bool clone3_args_valid(const struct kernel_clone_args *kargs)
if (kargs->flags & (CLONE_DETACHED | CSIGNAL))
return false;

+ if ((kargs->flags & (CLONE_SIGHAND | CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND)) ==
+ (CLONE_SIGHAND | CLONE3_CLEAR_SIGHAND))
+ return false;
+
if ((kargs->flags & (CLONE_THREAD | CLONE_PARENT)) &&
kargs->exit_signal)
return false;
--
2.23.0