Re: Notifying on empty cgroup

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Wed Jan 15 2014 - 08:59:45 EST


[CCing cgroups mailing list]
On Wed 15-01-14 06:12:45, Victor Porton wrote:
> I want to write software which needs to receive a signal when the cgroup
> created by it becomes empty. (After this the empty cgroup should be deleted
> just not to clutter the memory.)
>
> If the kernel does not support such notifications, it should be improved.
> This functionality is crucial for some kinds of software.
>
> There is /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd/release_agent but I don't understand how to
> use it. I don't understand why we would need it at all.

"1.4 What does notify_on_release do ?" in
Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt the kernel source doesn't help?

> Starting a binary on emptying a cgroup with the purpose to notify an other
> binary looks like a big overkill.

the binary can do rmdir which is what you want, no?

> Also my program should work in userspace without the need to use
> release_agent which can be accessed only by root.

The release_agent is global for all groups so the program doesn't have
to care.

> Note that my work is related with sandboxing software (running a program in
> closed environment, so that it would be unable for example to remove user's
> files).
>
> See also
> http://portonsoft.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/toward-robust-linux-sandbox/
>
> --
> Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org
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--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
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