Currently, if an event source callback returns an error, we'll disable
the event source and continue. This adds a per-event source flag that if
turned on goes further: the event loop is also exited, propagating the
error code.
This is inspired by some patterns repeatedly seen in #15206.
The idea is that event sources that server the "primary" function of a
program are marked like this, so that if they fail the failure is
instantly propagated and terminates the program.
This adds support for watching for process exits via Linux new pidfd
concept. This makes watching processes and killing them race-free if
properly used, fixing a long-standing UNIX misdesign.
This patch adds implicit and explicit pidfd support to sd-event: if a
process shall be watched and is specified by PID we will now internally
create a pidfd for it and use that, if available. Alternatively a new
constructor for child process event sources is added that takes pidfds
as input.
Besides mere watching of child processes via pidfd two additional
features are added:
→ sd_event_source_send_child_signal() allows sending a signal to the
process being watched in the safest way possible (wrapping
the new pidfd_send_signal() syscall).
→ sd_event_source_set_child_process_own() allows marking a process
watched for destruction as soon as the event source is freed. This is
currently implemented in userspace, but hopefully will become a kernel
feature eventually.
Altogether this means an sd_event_source object is now a safe and stable
concept for referencing processes in race-free way, with automatic
fallback to pre-pidfd kernels.
Note that this patch adds support for this only to sd-event, not to PID
1. That's because PID 1 needs to use waitid(P_ALL) for reaping any
process that might get reparented to it. This currently semantically
conflicts with pidfd use for watching processes since we P_ALL is
undirected and thus might reap process earlier than the pidfd notifies
process end, which is hard to handle. The kernel will likely gain a
concept for excluding specific pidfds from P_ALL watching, as soon as
that is around we can start making use of this in PID 1 too.
Lennart Poettering