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Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2024 14:30:46 +0100
From: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
To: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>, Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.pizza>, 
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-api@vger.kernel.org, 
	Tycho Andersen <tandersen@netflix.com>, "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] pidfd: implement PIDFD_THREAD flag for pidfd_open()
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On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 11:50:23AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 11:46 AM Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 11:24:48AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > > On 01/31, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On 01/31, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > > > Please note
> > > > >
> > > > >       /* TODO: respect PIDFD_THREAD */
> > > > >
> > > > > this patch adds into pidfd_send_signal().
> > > > >
> > > > > See also this part of discussion
> > > > >
> > > > >       > > +   /* TODO: respect PIDFD_THREAD */
> > > > >       >
> > > > >       > So I've been thinking about this at the end of last week. Do we need to
> > > > >       > give userspace a way to send a thread-group wide signal even when a
> > > > >       > PIDFD_THREAD pidfd is passed? Or should we just not worry about this
> > > > >       > right now and wait until someone needs this?
> > > > >
> > > > >       I don't know. I am fine either way, but I think this needs a separate
> > > > >       patch and another discussion in any case. Anyway should be trivial,
> > > > >       pidfd_send_signal() has the "flags" argument.
> > > > >
> > > > > with Christian in https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240130112126.GA26108@redhat.com/
> > >
> > > I missed that.  Whoops.
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 11:15 AM Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Forgot to mention...
> > > >
> > > > And I agree that pidfd_send_signal(flags => PGID/SID) can make
> > > > some sense too.
> > > >
> > > > But this a) doesn't depend on PIDFD_THREAD, and b) needs another
> > > > patch/discussion.
> > > >
> > > > But again, I am not sure I understood you correctly.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Hmm.
> > >
> > > When one works with regular (non-fd) pids / pgids etc, one specifies
> > > the signal domain at the time that one sends the signal.  I don't know
> > > what pidfds should do.  It seems a bit inefficient for anything that
> > > wants a pidfd and might send a signal in a different mode in the
> > > future to have to hold on to multiple pidfds, so it probably should be
> > > a pidfd_send_signal flag.
> > >
> > > Which leaves the question of what the default should be.  Should
> > > pidfd_send_signal with flags = 0 on a PIDFD_THREAD signal the process
> > > or the thread?  I guess there are two reasonable solutions:
> > >
> > > 1. flags = 0 always means process.  And maybe there's a special flag
> > > to send a signal that matches the pidfd type, or maybe not.
> > >
> > > 2. flags = 0 does what the pidfd seems to imply, and a new
> > > PIDFD_SIGNAL_PID flag overrides it to signal the whole PID even if the
> > > pidfd is PIDFD_THREAD.
> > >
> > > Do any of you have actual use cases in mind where one choice is
> > > clearly better than the other choice?
> >
> > So conceptually I think having the type of pidfd dictate the default
> > scope of the signal is the most elegant approach. And then very likely
> > we should just have:
> >
> > PIDFD_SIGNAL_THREAD
> > PIDFD_SIGNAL_THREAD_GROUP
> > PIDFD_SIGNAL_PROCESS_GROUP
> >
> > I think for userspace it doesn't really matter as long as we clearly
> > document what's going on.
> >
> 
> This seems reasonable unless we're likely to end up with a pidfd mode
> that doesn't actually make sense in a send_signal context.  But I'm
> not immediately seeing any reason that that would happen.

Yeah, I think that's very unlikely and we could reject it obased on api
design considerations.