nspawn: make nspawn robust to container failure

nspawn and the container child use eventfd to wait and notify each other
that they are ready so the container setup can be completed.

However in its current form the wait/notify event ignore errors that
may especially affect the child (container).

On errors the child will jump to the "child_fail" label and terminate
with _exit(EXIT_FAILURE) without notifying the parent. Since the eventfd
is created without the "EFD_NONBLOCK" flag, this leaves the parent
blocking on the eventfd_read() call. The container can also be killed
at any moment before execv() and the parent will not receive
notifications.

We can fix this by using cheap mechanisms, the new high level eventfd
API and handle SIGCHLD signals:

* Keep the cheap eventfd and EFD_NONBLOCK flag.

* Introduce eventfd states for parent and child to sync.
Child notifies parent with EVENTFD_CHILD_SUCCEEDED on success or
EVENTFD_CHILD_FAILED on failure and before _exit(). This prevents the
parent from waiting on an event that will never come.

* If the child is killed before execv() or before notifying the parent,
we install a NOP handler for SIGCHLD which will interrupt blocking calls
with EINTR. This gives a chance to the parent to call wait() and
terminate in main().

* If there are no errors, parent will block SIGCHLD, restore default
handler and notify child which will do execv(), then parent will pass
control to process_pty() to do its magic.

This was exposed in part by:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76193

Reported-by: Tobias Hunger tobias.hunger@gmail.com

1 files changed, 169 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/shared/eventfd-util.c b/src/shared/eventfd-util.c
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..27b7cf788f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/shared/eventfd-util.c
@@ -0,0 +1,169 @@
+/*-*- Mode: C; c-basic-offset: 8; indent-tabs-mode: nil -*-*/
+
+/***
+  This file is part of systemd.
+
+  Copyright 2014 Djalal Harouni
+
+  systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+  under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
+  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
+  (at your option) any later version.
+
+  systemd is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
+  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
+  Lesser General Public License for more details.
+
+  You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
+  along with systemd; If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+***/
+
+#include <assert.h>
+#include <errno.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+#include <sys/eventfd.h>
+#include <sys/syscall.h>
+
+#include "eventfd-util.h"
+#include "util.h"
+
+
+/*
+ * Use this to create processes that need to setup a full context
+ * and sync it with their parents using cheap mechanisms.
+ *
+ * This will create two blocking eventfd(s). A pair for the parent and
+ * the other for the child so they can be used as a notify mechanism.
+ * Each process will gets its copy of the parent and child eventfds.
+ *
+ * This is useful in case:
+ * 1) If the parent fails or dies, the child must die.
+ * 2) Child will install PR_SET_PDEATHSIG as soon as possible.
+ * 3) Parent and child need to sync using less resources.
+ * 4) If parent is not able to install a SIGCHLD handler:
+ *    parent will wait using a blocking eventfd_read() or
+ *    eventfd_child_succeeded() call on the child eventfd.
+ *
+ *    * If the child setup succeeded, child should notify with an
+ *      EVENTFD_CHILD_SUCCEEDED, parent will continue.
+ *    * If the child setup failed, child should notify with an
+ *      EVENTFD_CHILD_FAILED before any _exit(). This avoids blocking
+ *      the parent.
+ *
+ * 5) If parent is able to install a SIGCHLD handler:
+ *    An empty signal handler without SA_RESTART will do it, since the
+ *    blocking eventfd_read() or eventfd_parent_succeeded() of the
+ *    parent will be interrupted by SIGCHLD and the call will fail with
+ *    EINTR. This is useful in case the child dies abnormaly and did
+ *    not have a chance to notify its parent using EVENTFD_CHILD_FAILED.
+ *
+ * 6) Call wait*() in the main instead of the signal handler in order
+ *    to: 1) reduce side effects and 2) have a better handling for
+ *    child termination in order to reduce various race conditions.
+ *
+ *
+ * The return value of clone_with_eventfd() is the same of clone().
+ * On success the eventfds[] will contain the two eventfd(s). These
+ * file descriptors can be closed later with safe_close(). On failure,
+ * a negative value is returned in the caller's context, and errno will
+ * be set appropriately.
+ *
+ * Extra preliminary work:
+ * 1) Child can wait before starting its setup by using the
+ *    eventfd_recv_start() call on the parent eventfd, in that case the
+ *    parent must notify with EVENTFD_START, after doing any preliminary
+ *    work.
+ *
+ * Note: this function depends on systemd internal functions
+ * safe_close() and it should be used only by direct binaries, no
+ * libraries.
+ */
+pid_t clone_with_eventfd(int flags, int eventfds[2]) {
+        pid_t pid;
+
+        assert(eventfds);
+
+        eventfds[0] = eventfd(EVENTFD_INIT, EFD_CLOEXEC);
+        if (eventfds[0] < 0)
+                return -1;
+
+        eventfds[1] = eventfd(EVENTFD_INIT, EFD_CLOEXEC);
+        if (eventfds[1] < 0)
+                goto err_eventfd0;
+
+        pid = syscall(__NR_clone, flags, NULL);
+        if (pid < 0)
+                goto err_eventfd1;
+
+        return pid;
+
+err_eventfd1:
+        eventfds[1] = safe_close(eventfds[1]);
+err_eventfd0:
+        eventfds[0] = safe_close(eventfds[0]);
+        return -1;
+}
+
+int eventfd_send_state(int efd, eventfd_t s) {
+        return eventfd_write(efd, s);
+}
+
+/*
+ * Receive an eventfd state on the eventfd file descriptor.
+ *
+ * If the third argument is set to a value other than zero, then this
+ * function will compare the received value with this argument and set
+ * the return value.
+ *
+ * On success return 0. On error, -1 will be returned, and errno will
+ * be set appropriately.
+ */
+int eventfd_recv_state(int efd, eventfd_t *e, eventfd_t s) {
+        int ret;
+
+        ret = eventfd_read(efd, e);
+        if (ret < 0)
+                return ret;
+        else if (s != 0 && *e != s) {
+                errno = EINVAL;
+                return -1;
+        }
+
+        return 0;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Receive the EVENTFD_START state on the eventfd file descriptor.
+ *
+ * On Success return 0. On error, -1 will be returned, and errno will
+ * be set appropriately.
+ */
+int eventfd_recv_start(int efd) {
+        eventfd_t e = EVENTFD_INIT;
+        return eventfd_recv_state(efd, &e, EVENTFD_START);
+}
+
+/*
+ * Receive the EVENTFD_PARENT_SUCCEEDED state on the eventfd file
+ * descriptor.
+ *
+ * On Success return 0. On error, -1 will be returned, and errno will
+ * be set appropriately.
+ */
+int eventfd_parent_succeeded(int efd) {
+        eventfd_t e = EVENTFD_INIT;
+        return eventfd_recv_state(efd, &e, EVENTFD_PARENT_SUCCEEDED);
+}
+
+/*
+ * Receive the EVENTFD_CHILD_SUCCEEDED state on the eventfd file
+ * descriptor.
+ *
+ * On Success return 0. On error, -1 will be returned, and errno will
+ * be set appropriately.
+ */
+int eventfd_child_succeeded(int efd) {
+        eventfd_t e = EVENTFD_INIT;
+        return eventfd_recv_state(efd, &e, EVENTFD_CHILD_SUCCEEDED);
+}