oom: allow a non-CAP_SYS_RESOURCE proces to oom_score_adj down

We'd like to be able to oom_score_adj a process up/down as it
enters/leaves the foreground.  Currently, it is not possible to oom_adj
down without CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.  This patch allows a task to decrease its
oom_score_adj back to the value that a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE thread set it to
or its inherited value at fork.  Assuming the thread that has forked it
has oom_score_adj of 0, each process could decrease it back from 0 upon
activation unless a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE thread elevated it to something
higher.

Alternative considered:

* a setuid binary
* a daemon with CAP_SYS_RESOURCE

Since you don't wan't all processes to be able to reduce their oom_adj, a
setuid or daemon implementation would be complex.  The alternatives also
have much higher overhead.

This patch updated from original patch based on feedback from David
Rientjes.

Signed-off-by: Mandeep Singh Baines <msb@chromium.org>
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: Ying Han <yinghan@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
index ef757fca470b..23cae6548d3a 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
@@ -1323,6 +1323,10 @@ scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
 Writing to /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj or /proc/<pid>/oom_adj will change the
 other with its scaled value.
 
+The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last
+value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower
+requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
+
 NOTICE: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj is deprecated and will be removed, please see
 Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt.