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From:   Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>
Date:   Fri, 2 Aug 2019 15:50:54 +0200
To:     Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc:     Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>,
        Adrian Reber <areber@redhat.com>,
        Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
        Pavel Emelianov <xemul@virtuozzo.com>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
        Dmitry Safonov <0x7f454c46@gmail.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrei Vagin <avagin@gmail.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>,
        Radostin Stoyanov <rstoyanov1@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] fork: extend clone3() to support CLONE_SET_TID
Message-ID: <20190802135050.fx3tbynztmxbmqik@brauner.io>
References: <20190731161223.2928-1-areber@redhat.com>
 <20190802131943.hkvcssv74j25xmmt@brauner.io>
 <20190802133001.GE20111@redhat.com>
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On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 03:30:01PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> On 08/02, Christian Brauner wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 06:12:22PM +0200, Adrian Reber wrote:
> > > The main motivation to add CLONE_SET_TID to clone3() is CRIU.
> > >
> > > To restore a process with the same PID/TID CRIU currently uses
> > > /proc/sys/kernel/ns_last_pid. It writes the desired (PID - 1) to
> > > ns_last_pid and then (quickly) does a clone(). This works most of the
> > > time, but it is racy. It is also slow as it requires multiple syscalls.
> >
> > Can you elaborate how this is racy, please. Afaict, CRIU will always
> > usually restore in a new pid namespace that it controls, right?
> 
> Why? No. For example you can checkpoint (not sure this is correct word)
> a single process in your namespace, then (try to restore) it. 
> 
> > What is
> > the exact race?
> 
> something else in the same namespace can fork() right after criu writes
> the pid-for-restore into ns_last_pid.

Ok, that makes sense. :)
My CRIU userspace knowledge is sporadic, so I'm not sure how exactly it
restores process trees in pid namespaces and what workloads this would
especially help with.