Re: [RFC, PATCH 1/3] introduce SYS_CLONE_MASK

Eric W. Biederman
2007-04-09T16:23:05Z

Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com> writes:

> I concur with Eric's assessment. Adding new magic bits to the generic
> clone path seems like a poor way to cope with kernel threads. I think
> it's better if kernel thread setup gets less like normal user process
> setup. I also agree with Eric that PPID of 0 is a very natural way for
> kernel threads to be displayed. We need to know more about the nature
> of the compatibility issue in procps to judge whether there is good
> reason to avoid changing it.

I just investigated the procps issue. Using init_task as the parent
nothing sticks out as being wrong in /proc.

Further when I modified pstree to accept 0 as it's starting pid (from
which all else would be rooted). All of the kernel threads showed up.

So if anything I it is a feature that kernel threads don't show up
by default in pstree (when PPID == 0). It isn't a subtle kernel bug.

Eric