Re: [RESEND PATCH] prctl: add PR_[GS]ET_PDEATHSIG_PROC

Eric W. Biederman
2017-10-03T03:25:53Z

Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 14:30:58 +0200 Jürg Billeter <j@bitron.ch> wrote:
>
>> PR_SET_PDEATHSIG sets a parent death signal that the calling process
>> will get when its parent thread dies, even when the result of getppid()
>> doesn't change because the calling process is reparented to a different
>> thread in the same parent process. When managing multiple processes, a
>> process-based parent death signal is much more useful. E.g., to avoid
>> stray child processes.
>>
>> PR_SET_PDEATHSIG_PROC sets a process-based death signal. Unlike
>> PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, this is inherited across fork to allow killing a whole
>> subtree without race conditions.
>>
>> This can be used for sandboxing when combined with a seccomp filter.
>>
>> There have been previous attempts to support this by changing the
>> behavior of PR_SET_PDEATHSIG. However, that would break existing
>> applications. See https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117621804801689
>> and https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43300
>
> Are Eric and Oleg OK with this?
>
> A prctl manpage update will be needed, please (cc linux-api).

It makes for an interesting way of killing a process tree. The domino
effect.

I believe the rational for adding a new prctl.

The code where it calls group_send_sig_info is buggy for pdeath_signal.
And it no less buggy for this new case. There is no point to check
permissions when sending a signal to yourself. Especially this signal
gets cleared during exec with a change of permissions.

I would recommend using:
do_send_sig_info(p->signal->pdeath_signal_proc, SEND_SIG_NOINFO, p, true);

Perhaps with a comment saying that no permission check is needed when
sending a signal to yourself.

I don't know what I think about inherit over fork, and the whole tree
killing thing. Except when the signal is SIGKILL I don't know if that
code does what is intended. So I am a little leary of it.

Eric