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

Andrew Morton
2017-10-02T23:20:44Z

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).