mirror-linux/include/uapi
Christian Brauner 12ae2c81b2
clone: add CLONE_AUTOREAP
Add a new clone3() flag CLONE_AUTOREAP that 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.

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 where the parent simply doesn't care about the child's exit
status. No exit signal is delivered so exit_signal must be zero.

CLONE_AUTOREAP is rejected in combination with CLONE_PARENT. If a
CLONE_AUTOREAP child were to clone(CLONE_PARENT) the new grandchild
would inherit exit_signal == 0 from the autoreap parent's group leader
but without signal->autoreap. This grandchild would become a zombie that
never sends a signal and is never autoreaped - confusing and arguably
broken behavior.

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.

Link: https://github.com/uapi-group/kernel-features/issues/45
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260226-work-pidfs-autoreap-v5-1-d148b984a989@kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
2026-03-11 23:14:02 +01:00
..
asm-generic Scheduler changes for v7.0: 2026-02-10 12:50:10 -08:00
cxl
drm drm/amdgpu: set family for GC 11.5.4 2026-02-12 15:23:09 -05:00
fwctl
linux clone: add CLONE_AUTOREAP 2026-03-11 23:14:02 +01:00
misc Char/Misc/IIO/Binder changes for 6.18-rc1 2025-10-04 16:26:32 -07:00
mtd
rdma RDMA v7.0 merge window 2026-02-12 17:05:20 -08:00
regulator regulator: uapi: Use UAPI integer type 2025-12-22 09:00:42 +00:00
scsi scsi: ufs: core: Improve the documentation of UFS data frames 2026-01-11 22:04:10 -05:00
sound ASoC: SOF: ipc4-topology: Add new tokens for pipeline direction 2026-02-04 13:26:05 +00:00
video
xen
Kbuild