Skip to content
Commit 7ac592aa authored by Chris Hyser's avatar Chris Hyser Committed by Peter Zijlstra
Browse files

sched: prctl() core-scheduling interface



This patch provides support for setting and copying core scheduling
'task cookies' between threads (PID), processes (TGID), and process
groups (PGID).

The value of core scheduling isn't that tasks don't share a core,
'nosmt' can do that. The value lies in exploiting all the sharing
opportunities that exist to recover possible lost performance and that
requires a degree of flexibility in the API.

From a security perspective (and there are others), the thread,
process and process group distinction is an existent hierarchal
categorization of tasks that reflects many of the security concerns
about 'data sharing'. For example, protecting against cache-snooping
by a thread that can just read the memory directly isn't all that
useful.

With this in mind, subcommands to CREATE/SHARE (TO/FROM) provide a
mechanism to create and share cookies. CREATE/SHARE_TO specify a
target pid with enum pidtype used to specify the scope of the targeted
tasks. For example, PIDTYPE_TGID will share the cookie with the
process and all of it's threads as typically desired in a security
scenario.

API:

  prctl(PR_SCHED_CORE, PR_SCHED_CORE_GET, tgtpid, pidtype, &cookie)
  prctl(PR_SCHED_CORE, PR_SCHED_CORE_CREATE, tgtpid, pidtype, NULL)
  prctl(PR_SCHED_CORE, PR_SCHED_CORE_SHARE_TO, tgtpid, pidtype, NULL)
  prctl(PR_SCHED_CORE, PR_SCHED_CORE_SHARE_FROM, srcpid, pidtype, NULL)

where 'tgtpid/srcpid == 0' implies the current process and pidtype is
kernel enum pid_type {PIDTYPE_PID, PIDTYPE_TGID, PIDTYPE_PGID, ...}.

For return values, EINVAL, ENOMEM are what they say. ESRCH means the
tgtpid/srcpid was not found. EPERM indicates lack of PTRACE permission
access to tgtpid/srcpid. ENODEV indicates your machines lacks SMT.

[peterz: complete rewrite]
Signed-off-by: default avatarChris Hyser <chris.hyser@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Tested-by: default avatarDon Hiatt <dhiatt@digitalocean.com>
Tested-by: default avatarHongyu Ning <hongyu.ning@linux.intel.com>
Tested-by: default avatarVincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210422123309.039845339@infradead.org
parent 85dd3f61
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment