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Christian Brauner 8ec7c826d9 pidfs: persist information
Persist exit and coredump information independent of whether anyone
currently holds a pidfd for the struct pid.

The current scheme allocated pidfs dentries on-demand repeatedly.
This scheme is reaching it's limits as it makes it impossible to pin
information that needs to be available after the task has exited or
coredumped and that should not be lost simply because the pidfd got
closed temporarily. The next opener should still see the stashed
information.

This is also a prerequisite for supporting extended attributes on
pidfds to allow attaching meta information to them.

If someone opens a pidfd for a struct pid a pidfs dentry is allocated
and stashed in pid->stashed. Once the last pidfd for the struct pid is
closed the pidfs dentry is released and removed from pid->stashed.

So if 10 callers create a pidfs dentry for the same struct pid
sequentially, i.e., each closing the pidfd before the other creates a
new one then a new pidfs dentry is allocated every time.

Because multiple tasks acquiring and releasing a pidfd for the same
struct pid can race with each another a task may still find a valid
pidfs entry from the previous task in pid->stashed and reuse it. Or it
might find a dead dentry in there and fail to reuse it and so stashes a
new pidfs dentry. Multiple tasks may race to stash a new pidfs dentry
but only one will succeed, the other ones will put their dentry.

The current scheme aims to ensure that a pidfs dentry for a struct pid
can only be created if the task is still alive or if a pidfs dentry
already existed before the task was reaped and so exit information has
been was stashed in the pidfs inode.

That's great except that it's buggy. If a pidfs dentry is stashed in
pid->stashed after pidfs_exit() but before __unhash_process() is called
we will return a pidfd for a reaped task without exit information being
available.

The pidfds_pid_valid() check does not guard against this race as it
doens't sync at all with pidfs_exit(). The pid_has_task() check might be
successful simply because we're before __unhash_process() but after
pidfs_exit().

Introduce a new scheme where the lifetime of information associated with
a pidfs entry (coredump and exit information) isn't bound to the
lifetime of the pidfs inode but the struct pid itself.

The first time a pidfs dentry is allocated for a struct pid a struct
pidfs_attr will be allocated which will be used to store exit and
coredump information.

If all pidfs for the pidfs dentry are closed the dentry and inode can be
cleaned up but the struct pidfs_attr will stick until the struct pid
itself is freed. This will ensure minimal memory usage while persisting
relevant information.

The new scheme has various advantages. First, it allows to close the
race where we end up handing out a pidfd for a reaped task for which no
exit information is available. Second, it minimizes memory usage.
Third, it allows to remove complex lifetime tracking via dentries when
registering a struct pid with pidfs. There's no need to get or put a
reference. Instead, the lifetime of exit and coredump information
associated with a struct pid is bound to the lifetime of struct pid
itself.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250618-work-pidfs-persistent-v2-5-98f3456fd552@kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Alexander Mikhalitsyn <aleksandr.mikhalitsyn@canonical.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
2025-06-19 14:28:24 +02:00
arch The delayed from_timer() API cleanup: 2025-06-08 11:33:00 -07:00
block treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
certs sign-file,extract-cert: use pkcs11 provider for OPENSSL MAJOR >= 3 2024-09-20 19:52:48 +03:00
crypto EFI updates for v6.16 2025-05-30 12:42:57 -07:00
Documentation fourteen smb3 client fixes, most smbdirect related 2025-06-08 10:20:21 -07:00
drivers The delayed from_timer() API cleanup: 2025-06-08 11:33:00 -07:00
fs pidfs: persist information 2025-06-19 14:28:24 +02:00
include pidfs: persist information 2025-06-19 14:28:24 +02:00
init Rust changes for v6.16 2025-06-04 21:18:37 -07:00
io_uring io_uring-6.16-20250606 2025-06-06 13:09:03 -07:00
ipc - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
kernel pidfs: persist information 2025-06-19 14:28:24 +02:00
lib 13 hotfixes. 6 are cc:stable and the remainder address post-6.15 issues 2025-06-06 21:45:45 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: add CC0-1.0 license text 2025-05-21 14:54:17 +02:00
mm treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
net treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
rust Char/Misc/IIO pull request for 6.16-rc1 2025-06-06 11:50:47 -07:00
samples - The 3 patch series "hung_task: extend blocking task stacktrace dump to 2025-05-31 19:12:53 -07:00
scripts Kbuild updates for v6.16 2025-06-07 10:05:35 -07:00
security require gcc-8 and binutils-2.30 2025-05-31 08:16:52 -07:00
sound treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
tools turbostat v2025.06.08 2025-06-08 11:44:41 -07:00
usr usr/include: openrisc: don't HDRTEST bpf_perf_event.h 2025-05-12 15:03:17 +09:00
virt Merge branch 'kvm-lockdep-common' into HEAD 2025-05-28 06:29:17 -04:00
.clang-format Linux 6.15-rc5 2025-05-06 16:39:25 +10:00
.clippy.toml rust: clean Rust 1.88.0's warning about clippy::disallowed_macros configuration 2025-05-07 00:11:47 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.editorconfig .editorconfig: remove trim_trailing_whitespace option 2024-06-13 16:47:52 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore MAINTAINERS: Retire Ralf Baechle 2024-11-12 15:48:59 +01:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore Python compiled bytecode 2025-04-24 10:12:46 -06:00
.mailmap fourteen smb3 client fixes, most smbdirect related 2025-06-08 10:20:21 -07:00
.pylintrc docs: add a .pylintrc file with sys path for docs scripts 2025-04-09 12:10:33 -06:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING
CREDITS Update Christoph's Email address and make it consistent 2025-05-12 23:50:31 -07:00
Kbuild drm: ensure drm headers are self-contained and pass kernel-doc 2025-02-12 10:44:43 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS fourteen smb3 client fixes, most smbdirect related 2025-06-08 10:20:21 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.16-rc1 2025-06-08 13:44:43 -07:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.