[PATCH 4/4] fix dangling zombie when new parent ignores children

From: Roland McGrath
Date: Mon May 05 2008 - 20:35:29 EST


This fixes an arcane bug that we think was a regression introduced
by commit b2b2cbc4b2a2f389442549399a993a8306420baf. When a parent
ignores SIGCHLD (or uses SA_NOCLDWAIT), its children would self-reap
but they don't if it's using ptrace on them. When the parent thread
later exits and ceases to ptrace a child but leaves other live
threads in the parent's thread group, any zombie children are left
dangling. The fix makes them self-reap then, as they would have
done earlier if ptrace had not been in use.

Signed-off-by: Roland McGrath <roland@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/exit.c | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/exit.c b/kernel/exit.c
index 42980e2..afed083 100644
--- a/kernel/exit.c
+++ b/kernel/exit.c
@@ -697,6 +697,22 @@ static void exit_mm(struct task_struct * tsk)
}

/*
+ * Return nonzero if @parent's children should reap themselves.
+ *
+ * Called with write_lock_irq(&tasklist_lock) held.
+ */
+static int ignoring_children(struct task_struct *parent)
+{
+ int ret;
+ struct sighand_struct *psig = parent->sighand;
+ spin_lock(&psig->siglock);
+ ret = (psig->action[SIGCHLD-1].sa.sa_handler == SIG_IGN ||
+ (psig->action[SIGCHLD-1].sa.sa_flags & SA_NOCLDWAIT));
+ spin_unlock(&psig->siglock);
+ return ret;
+}
+
+/*
* Detach all tasks we were using ptrace on.
* Any that need to be release_task'd are put on the @dead list.
*
@@ -705,6 +721,7 @@ static void exit_mm(struct task_struct * tsk)
static void ptrace_exit(struct task_struct *parent, struct list_head *dead)
{
struct task_struct *p, *n;
+ int ign = -1;

list_for_each_entry_safe(p, n, &parent->ptraced, ptrace_entry) {
__ptrace_unlink(p);
@@ -720,10 +737,18 @@ static void ptrace_exit(struct task_struct *parent, struct list_head *dead)
* release_task() here because we already hold tasklist_lock.
*
* If it's our own child, there is no notification to do.
+ * But if our normal children self-reap, then this child
+ * was prevented by ptrace and we must reap it now.
*/
if (!task_detached(p) && thread_group_empty(p)) {
if (!same_thread_group(p->real_parent, parent))
do_notify_parent(p, p->exit_signal);
+ else {
+ if (ign < 0)
+ ign = ignoring_children(parent);
+ if (ign)
+ p->exit_signal = -1;
+ }
}

if (task_detached(p)) {
--
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