On 20.11.21 12:28, Yafang Shao wrote:

When I was implementing a new per-cpu kthread cfs_migration, I found the
comm of it "cfs_migration/%u" is truncated due to the limitation of
TASK_COMM_LEN. For example, the comm of the percpu thread on CPU10~19 are
all with the same name "cfs_migration/1", which will confuse the user. This
issue is not critical, because we can get the corresponding CPU from the
task's Cpus_allowed. But for kthreads correspoinding to other hardware
devices, it is not easy to get the detailed device info from task comm,
for example,

    jbd2/nvme0n1p2-
    xfs-reclaim/sdf

Currently there are so many truncated kthreads:

    rcu_tasks_kthre
    rcu_tasks_rude_
    rcu_tasks_trace
    poll_mpt3sas0_s
    ext4-rsv-conver
    xfs-reclaim/sd{a, b, c, ...}
    xfs-blockgc/sd{a, b, c, ...}
    xfs-inodegc/sd{a, b, c, ...}
    audit_send_repl
    ecryptfs-kthrea
    vfio-irqfd-clea
    jbd2/nvme0n1p2-
    ...

We can shorten these names to work around this problem, but it may be
not applied to all of the truncated kthreads. Take 'jbd2/nvme0n1p2-' for
example, it is a nice name, and it is not a good idea to shorten it.

One possible way to fix this issue is extending the task comm size, but
as task->comm is used in lots of places, that may cause some potential
buffer overflows. Another more conservative approach is introducing a new
pointer to store kthread's full name if it is truncated, which won't
introduce too much overhead as it is in the non-critical path. Finally we
make a dicision to use the second approach. See also the discussions in
this thread:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20211101060419.4682-1-laoar.shao@gmail.com/ (local)

After this change, the full name of these truncated kthreads will be
displayed via /proc/[pid]/comm:

    rcu_tasks_kthread
    rcu_tasks_rude_kthread
    rcu_tasks_trace_kthread
    poll_mpt3sas0_statu
    ext4-rsv-conversion
    xfs-reclaim/sdf1
    xfs-blockgc/sdf1
    xfs-inodegc/sdf1
    audit_send_reply
    ecryptfs-kthread
    vfio-irqfd-cleanup
    jbd2/nvme0n1p2-8

I do wonder if that could break some user space that assumes these names
have maximum length ..

But LGTM

Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand <redacted>


-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb