From: Ulrich Drepper The problem is as follows: in multi-threaded code (or more correctly: all code using clone() with CLONE_FILES) we have a race when exec'ing. thread #1 thread #2 fd=open() fork + exec fcntl(fd,F_SETFD,FD_CLOEXEC) In some applications this can happen frequently. Take a web browser. One thread opens a file and another thread starts, say, an external PDF viewer. The result can even be a security issue if that open file descriptor refers to a sensitive file and the external program can somehow be tricked into using that descriptor. Just adding O_CLOEXEC support to open() doesn't solve the whole set of problems. There are other ways to create file descriptors (socket, epoll_create, Unix domain socket transfer, etc). These can and should be addressed separately though. open() is such an easy case that it makes not much sense putting the fix off. The test program: #include #include #include #include #ifndef O_CLOEXEC # define O_CLOEXEC 02000000 #endif int main (int argc, char *argv[]) { int fd; if (argc > 1) { fd = atol (argv[1]); printf ("child: fd = %d\n", fd); if (fcntl (fd, F_GETFD) == 0 || errno != EBADF) { puts ("file descriptor valid in child"); return 1; } return 0; } fd = open ("/proc/self/exe", O_RDONLY | O_CLOEXEC); printf ("in parent: new fd = %d\n", fd); char buf[20]; snprintf (buf, sizeof (buf), "%d", fd); execl ("/proc/self/exe", argv[0], buf, NULL); puts ("execl failed"); return 1; } Signed-off-by: Ulrich Drepper Acked-by: Ingo Molnar Cc: Davide Libenzi Cc: Michael Kerrisk Cc: Chris Zankel Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- fs/open.c | 14 +++++++++++--- include/asm-generic/fcntl.h | 3 +++ 2 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff -puN fs/open.c~introduce-o_cloexec-take-2 fs/open.c --- a/fs/open.c~introduce-o_cloexec-take-2 +++ a/fs/open.c @@ -855,7 +855,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(dentry_open); /* * Find an empty file descriptor entry, and mark it busy. */ -int get_unused_fd(void) +static int get_unused_fd_flags(int flags) { struct files_struct * files = current->files; int fd, error; @@ -891,7 +891,10 @@ repeat: } FD_SET(fd, fdt->open_fds); - FD_CLR(fd, fdt->close_on_exec); + if (flags & O_CLOEXEC) + FD_SET(fd, fdt->close_on_exec); + else + FD_CLR(fd, fdt->close_on_exec); files->next_fd = fd + 1; #if 1 /* Sanity check */ @@ -907,6 +910,11 @@ out: return error; } +int get_unused_fd(void) +{ + return get_unused_fd_flags(0); +} + EXPORT_SYMBOL(get_unused_fd); static void __put_unused_fd(struct files_struct *files, unsigned int fd) @@ -959,7 +967,7 @@ long do_sys_open(int dfd, const char __u int fd = PTR_ERR(tmp); if (!IS_ERR(tmp)) { - fd = get_unused_fd(); + fd = get_unused_fd_flags(flags); if (fd >= 0) { struct file *f = do_filp_open(dfd, tmp, flags, mode); if (IS_ERR(f)) { diff -puN include/asm-generic/fcntl.h~introduce-o_cloexec-take-2 include/asm-generic/fcntl.h --- a/include/asm-generic/fcntl.h~introduce-o_cloexec-take-2 +++ a/include/asm-generic/fcntl.h @@ -48,6 +48,9 @@ #ifndef O_NOATIME #define O_NOATIME 01000000 #endif +#ifndef O_CLOEXEC +#define O_CLOEXEC 02000000 /* set close_on_exec */ +#endif #ifndef O_NDELAY #define O_NDELAY O_NONBLOCK #endif _