Merge patch series "pidfd: add CLONE_AUTOREAP, CLONE_NNP, and CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL"

Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> says:

Add three new clone3() flags for pidfd-based process lifecycle
management.

=== CLONE_AUTOREAP ===

CLONE_AUTOREAP makes a child process auto-reap on exit without ever
becoming a zombie. This is a per-process property in contrast to the
existing auto-reap mechanism via SA_NOCLDWAIT or SIG_IGN for SIGCHLD
which applies to all children of a given parent.

Currently the only way to automatically reap children is to set
SA_NOCLDWAIT or SIG_IGN on SIGCHLD. This is a parent-scoped property
affecting all children which makes it unsuitable for libraries or
applications that need selective auto-reaping of specific children while
still being able to wait() on others.

CLONE_AUTOREAP stores an autoreap flag in the child's signal_struct.
When the child exits do_notify_parent() checks this flag and causes
exit_notify() to transition the task directly to EXIT_DEAD. Since the
flag lives on the child it survives reparenting: if the original parent
exits and the child is reparented to a subreaper or init the child still
auto-reaps when it eventually exits. This is cleaner than forcing the
subreaper to get SIGCHLD and then reaping it. If the parent doesn't care
the subreaper won't care. If there's a subreaper that would care it
would be easy enough to add a prctl() that either just turns back on
SIGCHLD and turns off auto-reaping or a prctl() that just notifies the
subreaper whenever a child is reparented to it.

CLONE_AUTOREAP can be combined with CLONE_PIDFD to allow the parent to
monitor the child's exit via poll() and retrieve exit status via
PIDFD_GET_INFO. Without CLONE_PIDFD it provides a fire-and-forget
pattern. No exit signal is delivered so exit_signal must be zero.
CLONE_THREAD and CLONE_PARENT are rejected: CLONE_THREAD because
autoreap is a process-level property, and CLONE_PARENT because an
autoreap child reparented via CLONE_PARENT could become an invisible
zombie under a parent that never calls wait().

The flag is not inherited by the autoreap process's own children. Each
child that should be autoreaped must be explicitly created with
CLONE_AUTOREAP.

=== CLONE_NNP ===

CLONE_NNP sets no_new_privs on the child at clone time. Unlike
prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS) which a process sets on itself, CLONE_NNP
allows the parent to impose no_new_privs on the child at creation
without affecting the parent's own privileges. CLONE_THREAD is rejected
because threads share credentials. CLONE_NNP is useful on its own for
any spawn-and-sandbox pattern but was specifically introduced to enable
unprivileged usage of CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL.

=== CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL ===

This flag ties a child's lifetime to the pidfd returned from clone3().
When the last reference to the struct file created by clone3() is closed
the kernel sends SIGKILL to the child. A pidfd obtained via pidfd_open()
for the same process does not keep the child alive and does not trigger
autokill - only the specific struct file from clone3() has this
property. This is useful for container runtimes, service managers, and
sandboxed subprocess execution - any scenario where the child must die
if the parent crashes or abandons the pidfd or just wants a throwaway
helper process.

CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL requires both CLONE_PIDFD and CLONE_AUTOREAP. It
requires CLONE_PIDFD because the whole point is tying the child's
lifetime to the pidfd. It requires CLONE_AUTOREAP because a killed child
with no one to reap it would become a zombie - the primary use case is
the parent crashing or abandoning the pidfd so no one is around to call
waitpid(). CLONE_THREAD is rejected because autokill targets a process
not a thread.

If CLONE_NNP is specified together with CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL an
unprivileged user may spawn a process that is autokilled. The child
cannot escalate privileges via setuid/setgid exec after being spawned.
If CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL is specified without CLONE_NNP the caller must
have have CAP_SYS_ADMIN in its user namespace.

* patches from https://patch.msgid.link/20260226-work-pidfs-autoreap-v5-0-d148b984a989@kernel.org:
  selftests/pidfd: add CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL tests
  selftests/pidfd: add CLONE_NNP tests
  selftests/pidfd: add CLONE_AUTOREAP tests
  pidfd: add CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL
  clone: add CLONE_NNP
  clone: add CLONE_AUTOREAP

Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260226-work-pidfs-autoreap-v5-0-d148b984a989@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>

3 files changed, 55 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index e832da9d15a4..99a6cb4e7ab0 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -2028,6 +2028,41 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
 			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
 	}
 
+	if (clone_flags & CLONE_AUTOREAP) {
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_THREAD)
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_PARENT)
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+		if (args->exit_signal)
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+	}
+
+	if ((clone_flags & CLONE_PARENT) && current->signal->autoreap)
+		return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+
+	if (clone_flags & CLONE_NNP) {
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_THREAD)
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+	}
+
+	if (clone_flags & CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL) {
+		if (!(clone_flags & CLONE_PIDFD))
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+		if (!(clone_flags & CLONE_AUTOREAP))
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_THREAD)
+			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
+		/*
+		 * Without CLONE_NNP the child could escalate privileges
+		 * after being spawned, so require CAP_SYS_ADMIN.
+		 * With CLONE_NNP the child can't gain new privileges,
+		 * so allow unprivileged usage.
+		 */
+		if (!(clone_flags & CLONE_NNP) &&
+		    !ns_capable(current_user_ns(), CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
+			return ERR_PTR(-EPERM);
+	}
+
 	/*
 	 * Force any signals received before this point to be delivered
 	 * before the fork happens.  Collect up signals sent to multiple
@@ -2250,13 +2285,18 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
 	 * if the fd table isn't shared).
 	 */
 	if (clone_flags & CLONE_PIDFD) {
-		int flags = (clone_flags & CLONE_THREAD) ? PIDFD_THREAD : 0;
+		unsigned flags = PIDFD_STALE;
+
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_THREAD)
+			flags |= PIDFD_THREAD;
+		if (clone_flags & CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL)
+			flags |= PIDFD_AUTOKILL;
 
 		/*
 		 * Note that no task has been attached to @pid yet indicate
 		 * that via CLONE_PIDFD.
 		 */
-		retval = pidfd_prepare(pid, flags | PIDFD_STALE, &pidfile);
+		retval = pidfd_prepare(pid, flags, &pidfile);
 		if (retval < 0)
 			goto bad_fork_free_pid;
 		pidfd = retval;
@@ -2412,6 +2452,9 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
 	 */
 	copy_seccomp(p);
 
+	if (clone_flags & CLONE_NNP)
+		task_set_no_new_privs(p);
+
 	init_task_pid_links(p);
 	if (likely(p->pid)) {
 		ptrace_init_task(p, (clone_flags & CLONE_PTRACE) || trace);
@@ -2435,6 +2478,8 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
 			 */
 			p->signal->has_child_subreaper = p->real_parent->signal->has_child_subreaper ||
 							 p->real_parent->signal->is_child_subreaper;
+			if (clone_flags & CLONE_AUTOREAP)
+				p->signal->autoreap = 1;
 			list_add_tail(&p->sibling, &p->real_parent->children);
 			list_add_tail_rcu(&p->tasks, &init_task.tasks);
 			attach_pid(p, PIDTYPE_TGID);
@@ -2897,7 +2942,8 @@ static bool clone3_args_valid(struct kernel_clone_args *kargs)
 {
 	/* Verify that no unknown flags are passed along. */
 	if (kargs->flags &
-	    ~(CLONE_LEGACY_FLAGS | CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND | CLONE_INTO_CGROUP))
+	    ~(CLONE_LEGACY_FLAGS | CLONE_CLEAR_SIGHAND | CLONE_INTO_CGROUP |
+	      CLONE_AUTOREAP | CLONE_NNP | CLONE_PIDFD_AUTOKILL))
 		return false;
 
 	/*
diff --git a/kernel/ptrace.c b/kernel/ptrace.c
index 392ec2f75f01..68c17daef8d4 100644
--- a/kernel/ptrace.c
+++ b/kernel/ptrace.c
@@ -549,7 +549,8 @@ static bool __ptrace_detach(struct task_struct *tracer, struct task_struct *p)
 	if (!dead && thread_group_empty(p)) {
 		if (!same_thread_group(p->real_parent, tracer))
 			dead = do_notify_parent(p, p->exit_signal);
-		else if (ignoring_children(tracer->sighand)) {
+		else if (ignoring_children(tracer->sighand) ||
+			 p->signal->autoreap) {
 			__wake_up_parent(p, tracer);
 			dead = true;
 		}
diff --git a/kernel/signal.c b/kernel/signal.c
index d65d0fe24bfb..e61f39fa8c8a 100644
--- a/kernel/signal.c
+++ b/kernel/signal.c
@@ -2251,6 +2251,10 @@ bool do_notify_parent(struct task_struct *tsk, int sig)
 		if (psig->action[SIGCHLD-1].sa.sa_handler == SIG_IGN)
 			sig = 0;
 	}
+	if (!tsk->ptrace && tsk->signal->autoreap) {
+		autoreap = true;
+		sig = 0;
+	}
 	/*
 	 * Send with __send_signal as si_pid and si_uid are in the
 	 * parent's namespaces.