This effectively gives us an ability to create the pid namespace init as a child of the process (setns-ed to the pid namespace) different to the process which created the pid namespace itself. Original problem: There is a cool set_tid feature in clone3() syscall, it allows you to create process with desired pids on multiple pid namespace levels. Which is useful to restore processes in CRIU for nested pid namespace case. In nested container case we can potentially see this kind of pid/user namespace tree: Process ┌─────────┐ User NS0 ──▶ Pid NS0 ──▶ Pid p0 │ │ │ │ │ ▼ ▼ │ │ User NS1 ──▶ Pid NS1 ──▶ Pid p1 │ │ │ │ │ ... ... │ ... │ │ │ │ │ ▼ ▼ │ │ User NSn ──▶ Pid NSn ──▶ Pid pn │ └─────────┘ So to create the "Process" and set pids {p0, p1, ... pn} for it on all pid namespace levels we can use clone3() syscall set_tid feature, BUT the syscall does not allow you to set pid on pid namespace levels you don't have permission to. So basically you have to be in "User NS0" when creating the "Process" to actually be able to set pids on all levels. It is ok for almost any process, but with pid namespace init this does not work, as currently we can only create pid namespace init and the pid namespace itself simultaneously, so to make "Pid NSn" owned by "User NSn" we have to be in the "User NSn". We can't possibly be in "User NS0" and "User NSn" at the same time, hence the problem. Alternative solution: Yes, for the case of pid namespace init we can use old and gold /proc/sys/kernel/ns_last_pid interface on the levels lower than n. But it is much more complicated and introduces tons of extra code to do. It would be nice to make clone3() set_tid interface also aplicable to this corner case. Implementation: Now when anyone can setns to the pid namespace before the creation of init, and thus multiple processes can fork children to the pid namespace, it is important that we enforce the first process created is always pid namespace init. (Note that this was done by the previous preparational patch as a standalon useful change.) We only allow other processes after the init sets pid_namespace->child_reaper. Signed-off-by: Pavel Tikhomirov -- v2: Use *_ONCE for ->child_reaper accesses atomicity, and avoid taking task_list lock for reading it. Rebase to master, and thus remove now excess pidns_ready variable. v3: Separate *_ONCE change and "init is first" checks into separate commits. Note: I didn't find anything in copy_process() around setting the ->child_reaper which can influence the pid namespace, so it looks like the pid namespace is fully setup at the point when init sets ->child_reaper to receive more processes. Thus tasklist lock looks excess in pidns_for_children_get()'s ->child_reaper check and it should be safe not to have it in the corresponding check in alloc_pid() (introduced earlier in this series). --- kernel/pid_namespace.c | 9 --------- 1 file changed, 9 deletions(-) diff --git a/kernel/pid_namespace.c b/kernel/pid_namespace.c index e48f5de41361..d36afc58ee1d 100644 --- a/kernel/pid_namespace.c +++ b/kernel/pid_namespace.c @@ -369,15 +369,6 @@ static struct ns_common *pidns_for_children_get(struct task_struct *task) } task_unlock(task); - if (ns) { - read_lock(&tasklist_lock); - if (!ns->child_reaper) { - put_pid_ns(ns); - ns = NULL; - } - read_unlock(&tasklist_lock); - } - return ns ? &ns->ns : NULL; } -- 2.53.0