lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2008]   [Aug]   [11]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: checkpoint/restart ABI
Dave Hansen wrote:
> Arnd, Jeremy and Oren,
>
> Thanks for all of the very interesting comments about the ABI.
> Considering that we're still *really* early in getting this concept
> merged up into mainline, what do you all think we should do now?
>
> My main goal here is just to get everyone to understand the approach
> that we're proposing rather than to really fix the interfaces in stone.
> I bet we're going to be changing them a lot before these patches
> actually get in.
>
Yes.

It seems to me that worrying about ABI at this point is a bit premature.

This feature, as it currently stands, is essentially useless for any
practical purpose. Self-checkpointing a single process with no handling
of non-file file descriptors and no proper handling of file
file-descriptors is not very useful.

My understanding that this is basically a prototype for a more useful
multi-process or container-wide checkpoint facility.

While you could try to come up with an extensible file format that would
be able to handle any future extensions, the chances are you'd get it
wrong and need to break file format compatibility anyway.

I'm more interested in seeing a description of how you're doing to
handle things like:

* multiple processes
* pipes
* UNIX domain sockets
* INET sockets (both inter and intra machine)
* unlinked open files
* checkpointing file content
* closed files (ie, files which aren't currently open, but will be
soon, esp tmp files)
* shared memory
* (Peter, what have I forgotten?)

Having gone through this before, I don't think an all-kernel solution
can work except for the most simple cases.

Which, come to think of it, is an important point. What are the
expected use-cases for this feature? Do you really mean
checkpoint/restart? Do you expect to be able to checkpoint a process,
leave it running, then "rewind" by restoring the image? Or does
checkpoint always atomically kill the source process(es)? Are you
expecting to be able to resume on another machine?

Lightweight filesystem checkpointing, such as btrfs provides, would seem
like a powerful mechanism for handling a lot of the filesystem state
problems. It would have been useful when we did this...

J


\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2008-08-12 01:41    [W:0.126 / U:0.228 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site