pidfd design

[Christian Brauner]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 05:24:49PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 5:12 PM Christian Brauner <christian at brauner.io> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 05:00:17PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 4:45 PM Christian Brauner <christian at brauner.io> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 04:42:14PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 1:23 PM Daniel Colascione <dancol at google.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 1:14 PM Jann Horn <jannh at google.com> wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 8:44 PM Andy Lutomirski <luto at kernel.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > > One ioctl on procfs roots to translate pidfds into that procfs,
> > > > > > > subject to both the normal lookup permission checks and only working
> > > > > > > if the pidfd has a translation into the procfs:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > int proc_root_fd = open("/proc", O_RDONLY);
> > > > > > > int proc_dir_fd = ioctl(proc_root_fd, PROC_PIDFD_TO_PROCFSFD, pidfd);
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And one ioctl on procfs directories to translate from PGIDs and PIDs to pidfds:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > int proc_pgid_fd = open("/proc/self", O_RDONLY);
> > > > > > > int self_pg_pidfd = ioctl(proc_pgid_fd, PROC_PROCFSFD_TO_PIDFD, 0);
> > > > > > > int proc_pid_fd = open("/proc/thread-self", O_RDONLY);
> > > > > > > int self_p_pidfd = ioctl(proc_pid_fd, PROC_PROCFSFD_TO_PIDFD, 0);
> > > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > This sounds okay to me.  Or we could make it so that a procfs
> > > > > directory fd also works as a pidfd, but that seems more likely to be
> > > > > problematic than just allowing two-way translation like this
> > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And then, as you proposed, the new sys_clone() can just return a
> > > > > > > pidfd, and you can convert it into a procfs fd yourself if you want.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I think that's the consensus we reached on the other thread. The
> > > > > > O_DIRECTORY open on /proc/self/fd/mypidfd seems like it'd work well
> > > > > > enough.
> > > > >
> > > > > I must have missed this particular email.
> > > > >
> > > > > IMO, if /proc/self/fd/mypidfd allows O_DIRECTORY open to work, then it
> > > > > really ought to do function just like /proc/self/fd/mypidfd/. and
> > > > > /proc/self/fd/mypidfd/status should work.  And these latter two
> > > > > options seem nutty.
> > > > >
> > > > > Also, this O_DIRECTORY thing is missing the entire point of the ioctl
> > > > > interface -- it doesn't require procfs access.
> > > >
> > > > The other option was to encode the pid in the callers pid namespace into
> > > > the pidfd's fdinfo so that you can parse it out and open /proc/<pid>.
> > > > You'd just need an event on the pidfd to tell you when the process has
> > > > died. Jonathan and I just discussed this.
> > >
> > > From an application developer's POV, the ioctl interface sounds much,
> > > much nicer.
> >
> > Some people are strongly against ioctl()s some don't. I'm not against
> > them so both options are fine with me if people can agree.
> >
> 
> There are certainly non-ioctl equivalents that are functionally
> equivalent.  For example, there could be a syscall
> procfs_open_pidfd(procfs_fd, pid_fd).  I personally don't really mind
> ioctl() when it's really an operation on an fd.

I totally missed that mail somehow.
Yes, I agree that an ioctl() makes sense for that.