Message-ID: <440EED04.57FF5594@tv-sign.ru>
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:41:08 +0300
From: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
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To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@us.ibm.com>,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH rc5-mm] pids: kill PIDTYPE_TGID
References: <440DEADB.72C3A8A6@tv-sign.ru> <m11wxd27wx.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com>
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Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>
> Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru> writes:
>
> > depends on
> >
> > 	pidhash-dont-count-idle-threads.patch
> > 	pidhash-kill-switch_exec_pids.patch
> >
> > otherwise (I think) it is orthogonal to all tref/proc changes.
>
> You also depend on your recent change to call __unhash_process
> under the sighand lock.  Since the ->tgrp is protected by
> the sighand lock.

Actually now I think it depends only on yours
	pidhash-kill-switch_exec_pids.patch

This change (call __unhash_process under the sighand lock) does not
touch __unhash_process() itself, it only moves the callsite. So this
patch can go before or after this change. However it needs other
patches from -mm to avoid rejects.

> > This patch kills PIDTYPE_TGID pid_type thus saving one hash table
> > in kernel/pid.c and speeding up subthreads create/destroy a bit.
> > It is also a preparation for the further tref/pids rework.
> >
> > This patch adds 'struct list_head tgrp' to 'struct task_struct'
> > instead. Note that ->tgrp need not to be rcu safe.
>
> Is there a reason for this?  I think at least proc could easily
> take advantage of an rcu safe implementation.
>
> Hmm.  At the moment proc is only taking the tasklist_lock during
> traversal so we may have a problem with the list_add anyway.

tasklist or ->sighand is enough to do threads traversal. Yes,
adding _rcu suffix allows us to do it under rcu_read_lock().
However the thread group will not be stable during this traversal,
we can miss some newly created thread or hit an already unhashed
one.

Note also, that this loop:

	t = task;
	do {
		...
		t = next_thread(t);
	} while (t != task);

requires that task->tgrp is stable (I mean, 'task' must not be
unhashed during this loop). And I can't see how this is possible
unless we take ->sighand or tasklist_lock or task == current.

Eric, I know nothing about proc/, so the question is: do you want
me to add _rcu right now, or do you think it's better to do this
later?

grepping for next_thread in proc/ I have the feeling that we can
convert the code from:

	read_lock(tasklist);
	if (pid_alive(task)) {
		do ... while (t != task);
	}
	read_unlock(tasklist);

to:

	rcu_read_lock();
	if (lock_task_sighand(task)) {
		...
		unlock_task_sighand(task);
	}
	rcu_read_unlock();

But again, I don't understand this code.

> Also could we name the member not ->tgrp but ->threads?
> I keep half expecting tgrp to be a number, and have a hard
> time not mispelling it tpgrp.

Agreed. I also started with 'threads' name, but we already have
'struct thread_struct thread' in the task_struct. So may be
we could name it thread_group? I am rather agnostic and have nothing
against 'threads', will resend this patch after yours decision.

Oleg.
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