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authorLennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>2012-03-23 15:01:54 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2012-03-23 16:58:32 -0700
commitebec18a6d3aa1e7d84aab16225e87fd25170ec2b (patch)
treefd329dcd5173c252fc7aed64cab9c2a51575dcec /include/linux/sched.h
parent953326cb60c1dff1bd3458d6468d16d75f2bcd61 (diff)
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prctl: add PR_{SET,GET}_CHILD_SUBREAPER to allow simple process supervision
Userspace service managers/supervisors need to track their started services. Many services daemonize by double-forking and get implicitly re-parented to PID 1. The service manager will no longer be able to receive the SIGCHLD signals for them, and is no longer in charge of reaping the children with wait(). All information about the children is lost at the moment PID 1 cleans up the re-parented processes. With this prctl, a service manager process can mark itself as a sort of 'sub-init', able to stay as the parent for all orphaned processes created by the started services. All SIGCHLD signals will be delivered to the service manager. Receiving SIGCHLD and doing wait() is in cases of a service-manager much preferred over any possible asynchronous notification about specific PIDs, because the service manager has full access to the child process data in /proc and the PID can not be re-used until the wait(), the service-manager itself is in charge of, has happened. As a side effect, the relevant parent PID information does not get lost by a double-fork, which results in a more elaborate process tree and 'ps' output: before: # ps afx 253 ? Ss 0:00 /bin/dbus-daemon --system --nofork 294 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/polkit-1/polkitd 328 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/modem-manager 608 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/colord 658 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/upowerd 819 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/imsettings-daemon 916 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/udisks-daemon 917 ? S 0:00 \_ udisks-daemon: not polling any devices after: # ps afx 294 ? Ss 0:00 /bin/dbus-daemon --system --nofork 426 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/libexec/polkit-1/polkitd 449 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/modem-manager 635 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/libexec/colord 705 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/libexec/upowerd 959 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/libexec/udisks-daemon 960 ? S 0:00 | \_ udisks-daemon: not polling any devices 977 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/libexec/packagekitd This prctl is orthogonal to PID namespaces. PID namespaces are isolated from each other, while a service management process usually requires the services to live in the same namespace, to be able to talk to each other. Users of this will be the systemd per-user instance, which provides init-like functionality for the user's login session and D-Bus, which activates bus services on-demand. Both need init-like capabilities to be able to properly keep track of the services they start. Many thanks to Oleg for several rounds of review and insights. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix comment layout and spelling] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add lengthy code comment from Oleg] Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net> Signed-off-by: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> Acked-by: Valdis Kletnieks <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'include/linux/sched.h')
-rw-r--r--include/linux/sched.h12
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
index 0c147a4260a5..0c3854b0d4b1 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched.h
@@ -553,6 +553,18 @@ struct signal_struct {
int group_stop_count;
unsigned int flags; /* see SIGNAL_* flags below */
+ /*
+ * PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER marks a process, like a service
+ * manager, to re-parent orphan (double-forking) child processes
+ * to this process instead of 'init'. The service manager is
+ * able to receive SIGCHLD signals and is able to investigate
+ * the process until it calls wait(). All children of this
+ * process will inherit a flag if they should look for a
+ * child_subreaper process at exit.
+ */
+ unsigned int is_child_subreaper:1;
+ unsigned int has_child_subreaper:1;
+
/* POSIX.1b Interval Timers */
struct list_head posix_timers;
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