Re: [PATCH v1] mm/memory_hotplug: document the signal_pending() check in offline_pages()

[David Hildenbrand]

On 11.07.23 22:47, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 11-07-23 19:40:50, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> > Let's update the documentation that any signal is sufficient, and
> > add a comment that not only checking for fatal signals is historical
> > baggage: changing it now could break existing user space. although
> > unlikely.
> >
> > For example, when an app provides a custom SIGALRM handler and triggers
> > memory offlining, the timeout cmd would no longer stop memory offlining,
> > because SIGALRM would no longer be considered a fatal signal.
>
> Yes, and it is likely goot to mention here that this is an antipattern
> for many other kernel operations like IO (e.g. write) but it is a long
> term behavior that somebody might depend on and it is safer to reflect
> the documentation to the realitity rather than other way around (which
> would be imho better).

You mean adding something like

"Note that using signal_pending() instead of fatal_signal_pending() is 
an anti-pattern, but slowly deprecating that behavior to eventually 
change it in the far future is probably not worth the effort. If this 
ever becomes relevant for user-space, we might want to rethink."


Thanks!

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb