# Re: \[PATCH v8 07/11\] proc: flush task dcache entries from all procfs instances

- From: Eric W. Biederman \<hidden\>
- Date: 2020-02-12 19:18:42 
- List: linux-security-module
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-security-module/2020/02/172639
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/linux-api/2020/02/172639/t.md

```text
Linus Torvalds [ref] writes:

> On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 7:01 AM Eric W. Biederman [ref] wrote:
>>
>> Fundamentally proc_flush_task is an optimization.  Just getting rid of
>> dentries earlier.  At least at one point it was an important
>> optimization because the old process dentries would just sit around
>> doing nothing for anyone.
>
> I'm pretty sure it's still important. It's very easy to generate a
> _ton_ of dentries with /proc.
>
>> I wonder if instead of invalidating specific dentries we could instead
>> fire wake up a shrinker and point it at one or more instances of proc.
>
> It shouldn't be the dentries themselves that are a freeing problem.
> They're being RCU-free'd anyway because of lookup. It's the
> proc_mounts list that is the problem, isn't it?
>
> So it's just fs_info that needs to be rcu-delayed because it contains
> that list. Or is there something else?

The fundamental dcache thing we are playing with is:

	dentry = d_hash_and_lookup(proc_root, &name);
	if (dentry) {
		d_invalidate(dentry);
		dput(dentry);
	}

As Al pointed out upthread dput and d_invalidate can both sleep.

The dput can potentially go away if we use __d_lookup_rcu instead of
d_lookup.

The challenge is d_invalidate.

It has the fundamentally sleeping detach_mounts loop.  Even
shrink_dcache_parent has a cond_sched() in there to ensure it doesn't
live lock the system.

We could and arguabley should set DCACHE_CANT_MOUNT on the proc pid
dentries.  Which will prevent having to deal with mounts.

But I don't see an easy way of getting shrink_dcache_parent to run
without sleeping.  Ideas?


Eric







```