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Mapping PIDs from parent->child namespaces [message #41984] Mon, 03 January 2011 23:02 Go to next message
Mike Heffner is currently offline  Mike Heffner
Messages: 4
Registered: January 2011
Junior Member
Hi,

Is it possible for a process running in a parent PID namespace to map
the PID of a process running in a child's namespace from the
parent->child's namespace? For example, if I span the process "myproc"
with CLONE_NEWPID then a call to getpid() inside myproc will return "1"
whereas in the parent's namespace that process could actually be PID
"23495". I'd like to be able to know that 23495 maps to 1 in the new NS.
Obviously, just mapping the first PID is straightforward since I can
just look at the result of clone(). However, mapping the PIDs of
processes subsequently forked from "myproc" -- in this example -- I
haven't been able to figure out.


Thanks,

Mike
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Re: Mapping PIDs from parent->child namespaces [message #41985 is a reply to message #41984] Tue, 04 January 2011 19:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mike Heffner is currently offline  Mike Heffner
Messages: 4
Registered: January 2011
Junior Member
On 01/04/2011 11:04 AM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
> On 01/04/2011 12:02 AM, Mike Heffner wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is it possible for a process running in a parent PID namespace to map
>> the PID of a process running in a child's namespace from the
>> parent->child's namespace? For example, if I span the process "myproc"
>> with CLONE_NEWPID then a call to getpid() inside myproc will return "1"
>> whereas in the parent's namespace that process could actually be PID
>> "23495". I'd like to be able to know that 23495 maps to 1 in the new NS.
>> Obviously, just mapping the first PID is straightforward since I can
>> just look at the result of clone(). However, mapping the PIDs of
>> processes subsequently forked from "myproc" -- in this example -- I
>> haven't been able to figure out.
>
> AFAIK, it is not possible.
>
> That would be very nice to show the pid<-> vpid association.
>
> The procfs is a good candidate to show these informations.
>
> That would makes sense to show the content of /proc/<pid>/status with
> the pid relatively to the namespace.
>
> Let me give an example:
>
> Assuming the process '1234' creates a new pid namespace, and the child
> which is '1' in the new namespace has the real pid '4321'. This one
> mounts its /proc.
>
> If the process '1234' looks at /proc/4321/root/proc/1/status, it sees:
>
> ...
> Tgid: 1
> Pid: 1
> PPid: 0
> ...
>
>
> It could be:
>
> ...
> Tgid: 4321
> Pid: 4321
> PPid: 1234
> ...
>
> as the file is inspected from the parent namespace. Of course, if the
> file is looked from the child namespace context, we will see '1', '1'
> and '0'.
>
> I suppose the patch in the kernel should very small also.
>
> Thoughts ?

Would that mean that finding the pid->vpid association for a real PID X
requires checking all files /proc/<X>/root/proc/<Y>/status where Y is
all vpids until you find the one where Pid == X? It would be nice to
have a have a way to check a single file for the association where vpid
is not known beforehand -- unless I'm misunderstanding your solution.


Cheers,

Mike
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Re: Mapping PIDs from parent-&gt;child namespaces [message #41986 is a reply to message #41984] Tue, 04 January 2011 20:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Mike Heffner is currently offline  Mike Heffner
Messages: 4
Registered: January 2011
Junior Member
On 01/04/2011 11:44 AM, Cedric Le Goater wrote:
> On 01/04/2011 05:04 PM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
>> On 01/04/2011 12:02 AM, Mike Heffner wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Is it possible for a process running in a parent PID namespace to map
>>> the PID of a process running in a child's namespace from the
>>> parent->child's namespace? For example, if I span the process "myproc"
>>> with CLONE_NEWPID then a call to getpid() inside myproc will return "1"
>>> whereas in the parent's namespace that process could actually be PID
>>> "23495". I'd like to be able to know that 23495 maps to 1 in the new NS.
>>> Obviously, just mapping the first PID is straightforward since I can
>>> just look at the result of clone(). However, mapping the PIDs of
>>> processes subsequently forked from "myproc" -- in this example -- I
>>> haven't been able to figure out.
>>
>> AFAIK, it is not possible.
>>
>> That would be very nice to show the pid<-> vpid association.
>>
>> The procfs is a good candidate to show these informations.
>>
>> That would makes sense to show the content of /proc/<pid>/status with
>> the pid relatively to the namespace.
>>
>> Let me give an example:
>>
>> Assuming the process '1234' creates a new pid namespace, and the child
>> which is '1' in the new namespace has the real pid '4321'. This one
>> mounts its /proc.
>>
>> If the process '1234' looks at /proc/4321/root/proc/1/status, it sees:
>>
>> ...
>> Tgid: 1
>> Pid: 1
>> PPid: 0
>> ...
>>
>>
>> It could be:
>>
>> ...
>> Tgid: 4321
>> Pid: 4321
>> PPid: 1234
>> ...
>>
>> as the file is inspected from the parent namespace. Of course, if the
>> file is looked from the child namespace context, we will see '1', '1'
>> and '0'.
>>
>> I suppose the patch in the kernel should very small also.
>>
>> Thoughts ?
>
> we use the following patch to get the pid of a task as seen from its
> pid namespace. It can be useful to identify tasks writing pids in files.
>

Great, I'll try it out. Has there been any interest in getting this into
the mainline? Are there negatives to advertising child vpid's?


Cheers,

Mike
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Re: Mapping PIDs from parent-&gt;child namespaces [message #41987 is a reply to message #41984] Wed, 05 January 2011 04:50 Go to previous message
Mike Heffner is currently offline  Mike Heffner
Messages: 4
Registered: January 2011
Junior Member
On 01/04/2011 05:13 PM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
> On 01/04/2011 08:57 PM, Mike Heffner wrote:
>> On 01/04/2011 11:04 AM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
>>> On 01/04/2011 12:02 AM, Mike Heffner wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Is it possible for a process running in a parent PID namespace to map
>>>> the PID of a process running in a child's namespace from the
>>>> parent->child's namespace? For example, if I span the process "myproc"
>>>> with CLONE_NEWPID then a call to getpid() inside myproc will return "1"
>>>> whereas in the parent's namespace that process could actually be PID
>>>> "23495". I'd like to be able to know that 23495 maps to 1 in the new
>>>> NS.
>>>> Obviously, just mapping the first PID is straightforward since I can
>>>> just look at the result of clone(). However, mapping the PIDs of
>>>> processes subsequently forked from "myproc" -- in this example -- I
>>>> haven't been able to figure out.
>>>
>>> AFAIK, it is not possible.
>>>
>>> That would be very nice to show the pid<-> vpid association.
>>>
>>> The procfs is a good candidate to show these informations.
>>>
>>> That would makes sense to show the content of /proc/<pid>/status with
>>> the pid relatively to the namespace.
>>>
>>> Let me give an example:
>>>
>>> Assuming the process '1234' creates a new pid namespace, and the child
>>> which is '1' in the new namespace has the real pid '4321'. This one
>>> mounts its /proc.
>>>
>>> If the process '1234' looks at /proc/4321/root/proc/1/status, it sees:
>>>
>>> ...
>>> Tgid: 1
>>> Pid: 1
>>> PPid: 0
>>> ...
>>>
>>>
>>> It could be:
>>>
>>> ...
>>> Tgid: 4321
>>> Pid: 4321
>>> PPid: 1234
>>> ...
>>>
>>> as the file is inspected from the parent namespace. Of course, if the
>>> file is looked from the child namespace context, we will see '1', '1'
>>> and '0'.
>>>
>>> I suppose the patch in the kernel should very small also.
>>>
>>> Thoughts ?
>>
>> Would that mean that finding the pid->vpid association for a real PID
>> X requires checking all files /proc/<X>/root/proc/<Y>/status where Y
>> is all vpids until you find the one where Pid == X? It would be nice
>> to have a have a way to check a single file for the association where
>> vpid is not known beforehand -- unless I'm misunderstanding your
>> solution.
>
> Hmm, right. But how do you know a pid is belonging to a specific pid
> namespace ? I mean you can have a single process creating several pid
> namespaces. So while looking at the /proc/<pid>/status, you can see
> several times the same vpid, no ?
> I am not sure the kind of informations you want to collect but it is not
> really a problem to build an association table from the userspace by
> browsing the /proc/<pid>/root/proc/<vpids> and their corresponding pid
> from the 'status' file information.

Yeah, I see how that could be a problem. I guess I was coming from an
assumption that you knew which namespace a real PID came from just not
which vpid it was in that namespace.

>
> Do you have an example for a pid -> vpid association without looking at
> more informations from /proc ?
>

I actually did discover another solution. My original requirement was
for an application monitoring solution where procs in a child namespace
need to contact an agent running in the root namespace. In this example,
the agent needs to know the real PID in order to query stats from /proc
and to know when the process has exited.

I originally tested SO_PEERCRED, but that just returned the vpid.
However, it does look like this was patched in 2.6.36 with:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-containers/msg20944.html

SO_PEERCRED now returns the realpid in the agent while my application
can communicate the vpid over the socket.
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