Re: [PATCH] ttyprintk: Add TTY hangup callback.

From: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
To: "Samo Pogačnik" <samo_pogacnik@t-2.net>
Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@i-love.sakura.ne.jp>,
	Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@kernel.org>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
	John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	syzkaller-bugs <syzkaller-bugs@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ttyprintk: Add TTY hangup callback.
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2021 12:08:08 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YIfiiGVJqkWV/IDa@alley> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d4d0603716e5cb99a7a9a93d4f767278ac318557.camel@t-2.net>

On Mon 2021-04-26 18:42:05, Samo Pogačnik wrote:
> Dne 26.04.2021 (pon) ob 12:00 +0200 je Petr Mladek napisal(a):
> > It does not matter how much buffering games you play. As long as you
> > use printk() to store single lines into the kernel logbuffer they
> > alway could be interleaved with lines from other processes/CPUs.
> 
> Exactly. The only purpose of ttyprintk buffering is to mark any begining of
> lines occurring within the userspace-string written into ttyprintk TTY. The
> marked lines do not originate in the kernel source code, which is not obvious
> otherwise (imho this is importannt). Even the CONFIG_PRINTK_CALLER=y does not
> give this information, if the task ID printed does not live anymore.

I guess that you mean TPK_PREFIX + "[U] ".

> > I am not sure if I understand the problem. But why does ttyprintk need
> > any buffer at all. AFAIK, the use-case is to pass any written data into the
> > kernel logbuffer via printk()?
> (see above - it is not something the kernel is telling you)

But you could do this already in tpk_write(). I mean that you could
parse the given buffer, copy each line to a temporary buffer,
and call printk(TPK_PREFIX "[U] %s\n", tmp_buf).

Why is it postponed to tpk_close()?

IMHO, the printk() in tpk_write() might simplify the logic a bit.

> > Why tpk_write() does not call printk() directly?
> (see above)
> > 
> > If you call printk() directly, the caller_id would be from the process
> > that really wrote the data/message.
> It can be a kernel-code originating message printk-ed on behalf of a user task
> or a kernel-code originating message on behalf of a kernel task. Or it may be a
> user-code originating message on behalf of its task, when printk-ed via
> ttyprintk.

Exactly. Now, I am not sure if you think that this good or bad.

IMHO, it is much better to use caller_id of the process/context that
wrote the data/message instead of the process that caused the final
tpk_close().

Anyway, it is not a big deal. We could leave the code as is if it
works for you. My mine intention was to stop the ideas of per-task
buffers and additional complexity. It was just an idea how to
simplify the code instead.

Best Regards,
Petr