This patch adds a way to close a range of file descriptors on
posix_spawn as a new file action. The API is similar to the one
provided by Solaris 11 [1], where the file action causes the all open
file descriptors greater than or equal to input on to be closed when
the new process is spawned.
The function posix_spawn_file_actions_addclosefrom_np is safe to be
implemented by iterating over /proc/self/fd, since the Linux spawni.c
helper process does not use CLONE_FILES, so its has own file descriptor
table and any failure (in /proc operation) aborts the process creation
and returns an error to the caller.
I am aware that this file action might be redundant to the current
approach of POSIX in promoting O_CLOEXEC in more interfaces. However
O_CLOEXEC is still not the default and for some specific usages, the
caller needs to close all possible file descriptors to avoid them
leaking. Some examples are CPython (discussed in BZ#10353) and OpenJDK
jspawnhelper [2] (where OpenJDK spawns a helper process to exactly
closes all file descriptors). Most likely any environment which calls
functions that might open file descriptor under the hood and aim to use
posix_spawn might face the same requirement.
Checked on x86_64-linux-gnu and i686-linux-gnu on kernel 5.11 and 4.15.
[1] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36874/posix-spawn-file-actions-addclosefrom-np-3c.html
[2] https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/java.base/unix/native/libjava/childproc.c#L82
The function closes all open file descriptors greater than or equal to
input argument. Negative values are clamped to 0, i.e, it will close
all file descriptors.
As indicated by the bug report, this is a common symbol provided by
different systems (Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD) and, although
its has inherent issues with not taking in consideration internal libc
file descriptors (such as syslog), this is also a common feature used
in multiple projects [1][2][3][4][5].
The Linux fallback implementation iterates over /proc and close all
file descriptors sequentially. Although it was raised the questioning
whether getdents on /proc/self/fd might return disjointed entries
when file descriptor are closed; it does not seems the case on my
testing on multiple kernel (v4.18, v5.4, v5.9) and the same strategy
is used on different projects [1][2][3][5].
Also, the interface is set a fail-safe meaning that a failure in the
fallback results in a process abort.
Checked on x86_64-linux-gnu and i686-linux-gnu on kernel 5.11 and 4.15.
[1] 5238e95759/src/basic/fd-util.c (L217)
[2] ddf4b77e11/src/lxc/start.c (L236)
[3] 9e4f2f3a6b/Modules/_posixsubprocess.c (L220)
[4] 5f47c0613e/src/libstd/sys/unix/process2.rs (L303-L308)
[5] https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/master/src/java.base/unix/native/libjava/childproc.c#L82
