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From: Bhupesh <bhupesh@igalia.com>
To: akpm@linux-foundation.org
Cc: bhupesh@igalia.com, kernel-dev@igalia.com,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, bpf@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
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	mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com, arnaldo.melo@gmail.com,
	alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com, andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com,
	mirq-linux@rere.qmqm.pl, peterz@infradead.org,
	willy@infradead.org, david@redhat.com, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk,
	keescook@chromium.org, ebiederm@xmission.com, brauner@kernel.org,
	jack@suse.cz, mingo@redhat.com, juri.lelli@redhat.com,
	bsegall@google.com, mgorman@suse.de, vschneid@redhat.com,
	linux-trace-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kees@kernel.org,
	torvalds@linux-foundation.org
Subject: [PATCH v6 0/3] Add support for long task name
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:06:09 +0530	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20250724123612.206110-1-bhupesh@igalia.com> (raw)

Changes since v5:
================
- v5 can be seen here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250716123916.511889-1-bhupesh@igalia.com/ 
- As suggested by Linus, replaced 'tsk->comm' with 'tsk->comm_str' locally, and verified basic
  thread names and then changed 'tsk->comm_str' back to 'tsk->comm'. So essentially now 'tsk->comm'
  is TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN i.e. 64-bytes long.

Changes since v4:
================
- v4 can be seen here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250521062337.53262-1-bhupesh@igalia.com/ 
- As suggested by Kees, replaced tsk->comm with tsk->comm_str, inside 'task_struct'
  where TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN is 64-bytes.

Changes since v3:
================
- v3 can be seen here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250507110444.963779-1-bhupesh@igalia.com/
- As suggested by Petr and Steven, used 'comm_ext' name instead of
  'real_comm'. Correspondingly the macro name is changed to 'TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN'
  for the 64-byte extended comm.
- Rebased this patchset on linux-next/master, which contain the following patch from
  Steven now:
       155fd6c3e2f0 ("tracing/sched: Use __string() instead of fixed lengths for task->comm")
- Accordingly, v4 drops the changes done for 'trace/sched' events in v3,
  but retains the 'safe' memcpy' changes for other kernel trace users.

Changes since v2:
================
- v2 can be seen here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250331121820.455916-1-bhupesh@igalia.com/
- As suggested by Yafang and Kees, picked Linus' suggested approach for
  this version (see: <https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wjAmmHUg6vho1KjzQi2=psR30+CogFd4aXrThr2gsiS4g@mail.gmail.com/>).
- Dropped kthreads patch from this version. It would be sent out
  separately, if we have a consensus on this approach.

Changes since v1:
================
- v1 can be seen here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250314052715.610377-1-bhupesh@igalia.com/
- As suggested by Kees, added [PATCH 3/3] to have a consistent
  'full_name' entry inside 'task_struct' which both tasks and
  kthreads can use.
- Fixed the commit message to indicate that the existing ABI
  '/proc/$pid/task/$tid/comm' remains untouched and a parallel
  '/proc/$pid/task/$tid/full_name' ABI for new (interested) users.

While working with user-space debugging tools which work especially
on linux gaming platforms, I found that the task name is truncated due
to the limitation of TASK_COMM_LEN.

Now, during debug tracing, seeing truncated names is not very useful,
especially on gaming platforms where the number of tasks running can
be very high.

This patchset does not touch 'TASK_COMM_LEN' at all, i.e.
'TASK_COMM_LEN' and the 16-byte design remains untouched.

Via this patchset, Linus suggested 'tsk->comm' is made 64-byte long
and equal to TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN.

To avoid any surprises / bug,s I replaced 'tsk->comm' with
'tsk->comm_str' locally inside 'task_struct' and checked compilation
of code and basic working of thread names:

       struct task_struct {
	       ..............
               char    comm_str[TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN];
	       ..............
       };

       where TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN is 64-bytes.

Once done, I changed the name back to 'tsk->comm'.

To ensure that the existing ABI and userspace continues to work
as intended, we ensure that:

- Existing users of 'get_task_comm'/ 'set_task_comm' will get 'tsk->comm'
  truncated to a maximum of 'TASK_COMM_LEN' (16-bytes) to maintain ABI,
- New / Modified users of 'get_task_comm'/ 'set_task_comm' will get
 'tsk->comm' supported up to a maximum of 'TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN' (64-bytes).

Note, that the existing users have not been modified to migrate to
'TASK_COMM_EXT_LEN', in case they have hard-coded expectations of
dealing with only a 'TASK_COMM_LEN' long 'tsk->comm_str'.

After this change, gdb is able to show full name of the task, using a
simple app which generates threads with long names [see 1]:
  # gdb ./threadnames -ex "run info thread" -ex "detach" -ex "quit" > log
  # cat log

  NameThatIsTooLongForComm[4662]

[1]. https://github.com/lostgoat/tasknames

Bhupesh (3):
  exec: Remove obsolete comments
  treewide: Switch memcpy() users of 'task->comm' to a more safer
    implementation
  include: Set tsk->comm length to 64 bytes

 include/linux/coredump.h       |  3 ++-
 include/linux/sched.h          | 15 +++++++++------
 include/trace/events/block.h   |  5 +++++
 include/trace/events/oom.h     |  1 +
 include/trace/events/osnoise.h |  1 +
 include/trace/events/signal.h  |  1 +
 include/trace/events/task.h    |  2 ++
 7 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

-- 
2.38.1



             reply	other threads:[~2025-07-24 12:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-07-24 12:36 Bhupesh [this message]
2025-07-24 12:36 ` [PATCH v6 1/3] exec: Remove obsolete comments Bhupesh
2025-07-24 23:50   ` Kees Cook
2025-07-24 12:36 ` [PATCH v6 2/3] treewide: Switch memcpy() users of 'task->comm' to a more safer implementation Bhupesh
2025-07-24 23:49   ` Kees Cook
2025-07-26 17:50     ` Linus Torvalds
2025-07-26 23:19       ` Kees Cook
2025-07-26 23:37         ` Linus Torvalds
2025-08-05 11:13           ` Bhupesh Sharma
2025-07-24 12:36 ` [PATCH v6 3/3] include: Set tsk->comm length to 64 bytes Bhupesh
2025-07-24 23:38   ` Kees Cook
2025-07-26 11:20   ` kernel test robot

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