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1 .\" Copyright (c) 1992 Drew Eckhardt <drew@cs.colorado.edu>, March 28, 1992
2 .\" and Copyright (c) Michael Kerrisk, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2013
3 .\"
4 .\" %%%LICENSE_START(GPL_NOVERSION_ONELINE)
5 .\" May be distributed under the GNU General Public License.
6 .\" %%%LICENSE_END
7 .\"
8 .\" Modified by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
9 .\" Modified 24 Jul 1993 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
10 .\" Modified 21 Aug 1994 by Michael Chastain <mec@shell.portal.com>:
11 .\" New man page (copied from 'fork.2').
12 .\" Modified 10 June 1995 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
13 .\" Modified 25 April 1998 by Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>
14 .\" Modified 26 Jun 2001 by Michael Kerrisk
15 .\" Mostly upgraded to 2.4.x
16 .\" Added prototype for sys_clone() plus description
17 .\" Added CLONE_THREAD with a brief description of thread groups
18 .\" Added CLONE_PARENT and revised entire page remove ambiguity
19 .\" between "calling process" and "parent process"
20 .\" Added CLONE_PTRACE and CLONE_VFORK
21 .\" Added EPERM and EINVAL error codes
22 .\" Renamed "__clone" to "clone" (which is the prototype in <sched.h>)
23 .\" various other minor tidy ups and clarifications.
24 .\" Modified 26 Jun 2001 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
25 .\" Updated notes for 2.4.7+ behavior of CLONE_THREAD
26 .\" Modified 15 Oct 2002 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
27 .\" Added description for CLONE_NEWNS, which was added in 2.4.19
28 .\" Slightly rephrased, aeb.
29 .\" Modified 1 Feb 2003 - added CLONE_SIGHAND restriction, aeb.
30 .\" Modified 1 Jan 2004 - various updates, aeb
31 .\" Modified 2004-09-10 - added CLONE_PARENT_SETTID etc. - aeb.
32 .\" 2005-04-12, mtk, noted the PID caching behavior of NPTL's getpid()
33 .\" wrapper under BUGS.
34 .\" 2005-05-10, mtk, added CLONE_SYSVSEM, CLONE_UNTRACED, CLONE_STOPPED.
35 .\" 2005-05-17, mtk, Substantially enhanced discussion of CLONE_THREAD.
36 .\" 2008-11-18, mtk, order CLONE_* flags alphabetically
37 .\" 2008-11-18, mtk, document CLONE_NEWPID
38 .\" 2008-11-19, mtk, document CLONE_NEWUTS
39 .\" 2008-11-19, mtk, document CLONE_NEWIPC
40 .\" 2008-11-19, Jens Axboe, mtk, document CLONE_IO
41 .\"
42 .TH CLONE 2 2017-09-15 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
43 .SH NAME
44 clone, __clone2 \- create a child process
45 .SH SYNOPSIS
46 .nf
47 /* Prototype for the glibc wrapper function */
48 .PP
49 .B #define _GNU_SOURCE
50 .B #include <sched.h>
51 .PP
52 .BI "int clone(int (*" "fn" ")(void *), void *" child_stack ,
53 .BI " int " flags ", void *" "arg" ", ... "
54 .BI " /* pid_t *" ptid ", void *" newtls \
55 ", pid_t *" ctid " */ );"
56 .PP
57 /* For the prototype of the raw system call, see NOTES */
58 .fi
59 .SH DESCRIPTION
60 .BR clone ()
61 creates a new process, in a manner similar to
62 .BR fork (2).
63 .PP
64 This page describes both the glibc
65 .BR clone ()
66 wrapper function and the underlying system call on which it is based.
67 The main text describes the wrapper function;
68 the differences for the raw system call
69 are described toward the end of this page.
70 .PP
71 Unlike
72 .BR fork (2),
73 .BR clone ()
74 allows the child process to share parts of its execution context with
75 the calling process, such as the virtual address space, the table of file
76 descriptors, and the table of signal handlers.
77 (Note that on this manual
78 page, "calling process" normally corresponds to "parent process".
79 But see the description of
80 .B CLONE_PARENT
81 below.)
82 .PP
83 One use of
84 .BR clone ()
85 is to implement threads: multiple flows of control in a program that
86 run concurrently in a shared address space.
87 .PP
88 When the child process is created with
89 .BR clone (),
90 it commences execution by calling the function pointed to by the argument
91 .IR fn .
92 (This differs from
93 .BR fork (2),
94 where execution continues in the child from the point
95 of the
96 .BR fork (2)
97 call.)
98 The
99 .I arg
100 argument is passed as the argument of the function
101 .IR fn .
102 .PP
103 When the
104 .IR fn ( arg )
105 function returns, the child process terminates.
106 The integer returned by
107 .I fn
108 is the exit status for the child process.
109 The child process may also terminate explicitly by calling
110 .BR exit (2)
111 or after receiving a fatal signal.
112 .PP
113 The
114 .I child_stack
115 argument specifies the location of the stack used by the child process.
116 Since the child and calling process may share memory,
117 it is not possible for the child process to execute in the
118 same stack as the calling process.
119 The calling process must therefore
120 set up memory space for the child stack and pass a pointer to this
121 space to
122 .BR clone ().
123 Stacks grow downward on all processors that run Linux
124 (except the HP PA processors), so
125 .I child_stack
126 usually points to the topmost address of the memory space set up for
127 the child stack.
128 .PP
129 The low byte of
130 .I flags
131 contains the number of the
132 .I "termination signal"
133 sent to the parent when the child dies.
134 If this signal is specified as anything other than
135 .BR SIGCHLD ,
136 then the parent process must specify the
137 .B __WALL
138 or
139 .B __WCLONE
140 options when waiting for the child with
141 .BR wait (2).
142 If no signal is specified, then the parent process is not signaled
143 when the child terminates.
144 .PP
145 .I flags
146 may also be bitwise-ORed with zero or more of the following constants,
147 in order to specify what is shared between the calling process
148 and the child process:
149 .TP
150 .BR CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID " (since Linux 2.5.49)"
151 Clear (zero) the child thread ID at the location
152 .I ctid
153 in child memory when the child exits, and do a wakeup on the futex
154 at that address.
155 The address involved may be changed by the
156 .BR set_tid_address (2)
157 system call.
158 This is used by threading libraries.
159 .TP
160 .BR CLONE_CHILD_SETTID " (since Linux 2.5.49)"
161 Store the child thread ID at the location
162 .I ctid
163 in the child's memory.
164 The store operation completes before
165 .BR clone ()
166 returns control to user space.
167 .TP
168 .BR CLONE_FILES " (since Linux 2.0)"
169 If
170 .B CLONE_FILES
171 is set, the calling process and the child process share the same file
172 descriptor table.
173 Any file descriptor created by the calling process or by the child
174 process is also valid in the other process.
175 Similarly, if one of the processes closes a file descriptor,
176 or changes its associated flags (using the
177 .BR fcntl (2)
178 .B F_SETFD
179 operation), the other process is also affected.
180 If a process sharing a file descriptor table calls
181 .BR execve (2),
182 its file descriptor table is duplicated (unshared).
183 .IP
184 If
185 .B CLONE_FILES
186 is not set, the child process inherits a copy of all file descriptors
187 opened in the calling process at the time of
188 .BR clone ().
189 Subsequent operations that open or close file descriptors,
190 or change file descriptor flags,
191 performed by either the calling
192 process or the child process do not affect the other process.
193 Note, however,
194 that the duplicated file descriptors in the child refer to the same open file
195 descriptions as the corresponding file descriptors in the calling process,
196 and thus share file offsets and file status flags (see
197 .BR open (2)).
198 .TP
199 .BR CLONE_FS " (since Linux 2.0)"
200 If
201 .B CLONE_FS
202 is set, the caller and the child process share the same filesystem
203 information.
204 This includes the root of the filesystem, the current
205 working directory, and the umask.
206 Any call to
207 .BR chroot (2),
208 .BR chdir (2),
209 or
210 .BR umask (2)
211 performed by the calling process or the child process also affects the
212 other process.
213 .IP
214 If
215 .B CLONE_FS
216 is not set, the child process works on a copy of the filesystem
217 information of the calling process at the time of the
218 .BR clone ()
219 call.
220 Calls to
221 .BR chroot (2),
222 .BR chdir (2),
223 or
224 .BR umask (2)
225 performed later by one of the processes do not affect the other process.
226 .TP
227 .BR CLONE_IO " (since Linux 2.6.25)"
228 If
229 .B CLONE_IO
230 is set, then the new process shares an I/O context with
231 the calling process.
232 If this flag is not set, then (as with
233 .BR fork (2))
234 the new process has its own I/O context.
235 .IP
236 .\" The following based on text from Jens Axboe
237 The I/O context is the I/O scope of the disk scheduler (i.e.,
238 what the I/O scheduler uses to model scheduling of a process's I/O).
239 If processes share the same I/O context,
240 they are treated as one by the I/O scheduler.
241 As a consequence, they get to share disk time.
242 For some I/O schedulers,
243 .\" the anticipatory and CFQ scheduler
244 if two processes share an I/O context,
245 they will be allowed to interleave their disk access.
246 If several threads are doing I/O on behalf of the same process
247 .RB ( aio_read (3),
248 for instance), they should employ
249 .BR CLONE_IO
250 to get better I/O performance.
251 .\" with CFQ and AS.
252 .IP
253 If the kernel is not configured with the
254 .B CONFIG_BLOCK
255 option, this flag is a no-op.
256 .TP
257 .BR CLONE_NEWCGROUP " (since Linux 4.6)"
258 Create the process in a new cgroup namespace.
259 If this flag is not set, then (as with
260 .BR fork (2))
261 the process is created in the same cgroup namespaces as the calling process.
262 This flag is intended for the implementation of containers.
263 .IP
264 For further information on cgroup namespaces, see
265 .BR cgroup_namespaces (7).
266 .IP
267 Only a privileged process
268 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
269 can employ
270 .BR CLONE_NEWCGROUP .
271 .\"
272 .TP
273 .BR CLONE_NEWIPC " (since Linux 2.6.19)"
274 If
275 .B CLONE_NEWIPC
276 is set, then create the process in a new IPC namespace.
277 If this flag is not set, then (as with
278 .BR fork (2)),
279 the process is created in the same IPC namespace as
280 the calling process.
281 This flag is intended for the implementation of containers.
282 .IP
283 An IPC namespace provides an isolated view of System\ V IPC objects (see
284 .BR svipc (7))
285 and (since Linux 2.6.30)
286 .\" commit 7eafd7c74c3f2e67c27621b987b28397110d643f
287 .\" https://lwn.net/Articles/312232/
288 POSIX message queues
289 (see
290 .BR mq_overview (7)).
291 The common characteristic of these IPC mechanisms is that IPC
292 objects are identified by mechanisms other than filesystem
293 pathnames.
294 .IP
295 Objects created in an IPC namespace are visible to all other processes
296 that are members of that namespace,
297 but are not visible to processes in other IPC namespaces.
298 .IP
299 When an IPC namespace is destroyed
300 (i.e., when the last process that is a member of the namespace terminates),
301 all IPC objects in the namespace are automatically destroyed.
302 .IP
303 Only a privileged process
304 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
305 can employ
306 .BR CLONE_NEWIPC .
307 This flag can't be specified in conjunction with
308 .BR CLONE_SYSVSEM .
309 .IP
310 For further information on IPC namespaces, see
311 .BR namespaces (7).
312 .TP
313 .BR CLONE_NEWNET " (since Linux 2.6.24)"
314 (The implementation of this flag was completed only
315 by about kernel version 2.6.29.)
316 .IP
317 If
318 .B CLONE_NEWNET
319 is set, then create the process in a new network namespace.
320 If this flag is not set, then (as with
321 .BR fork (2))
322 the process is created in the same network namespace as
323 the calling process.
324 This flag is intended for the implementation of containers.
325 .IP
326 A network namespace provides an isolated view of the networking stack
327 (network device interfaces, IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks,
328 IP routing tables, firewall rules, the
329 .I /proc/net
330 and
331 .I /sys/class/net
332 directory trees, sockets, etc.).
333 A physical network device can live in exactly one
334 network namespace.
335 A virtual network
336 .RB ( veth (4))
337 device pair provides a pipe-like abstraction
338 that can be used to create tunnels between network namespaces,
339 and can be used to create a bridge to a physical network device
340 in another namespace.
341 .IP
342 When a network namespace is freed
343 (i.e., when the last process in the namespace terminates),
344 its physical network devices are moved back to the
345 initial network namespace (not to the parent of the process).
346 For further information on network namespaces, see
347 .BR namespaces (7).
348 .IP
349 Only a privileged process
350 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
351 can employ
352 .BR CLONE_NEWNET .
353 .TP
354 .BR CLONE_NEWNS " (since Linux 2.4.19)"
355 If
356 .B CLONE_NEWNS
357 is set, the cloned child is started in a new mount namespace,
358 initialized with a copy of the namespace of the parent.
359 If
360 .B CLONE_NEWNS
361 is not set, the child lives in the same mount
362 namespace as the parent.
363 .IP
364 Only a privileged process
365 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
366 can employ
367 .BR CLONE_NEWNS .
368 It is not permitted to specify both
369 .B CLONE_NEWNS
370 and
371 .B CLONE_FS
372 .\" See https://lwn.net/Articles/543273/
373 in the same
374 .BR clone ()
375 call.
376 .IP
377 For further information on mount namespaces, see
378 .BR namespaces (7)
379 and
380 .BR mount_namespaces (7).
381 .TP
382 .BR CLONE_NEWPID " (since Linux 2.6.24)"
383 .\" This explanation draws a lot of details from
384 .\" http://lwn.net/Articles/259217/
385 .\" Authors: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
386 .\" and Kir Kolyshkin <kir@openvz.org>
387 .\"
388 .\" The primary kernel commit is 30e49c263e36341b60b735cbef5ca37912549264
389 .\" Author: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
390 If
391 .B CLONE_NEWPID
392 is set, then create the process in a new PID namespace.
393 If this flag is not set, then (as with
394 .BR fork (2))
395 the process is created in the same PID namespace as
396 the calling process.
397 This flag is intended for the implementation of containers.
398 .IP
399 For further information on PID namespaces, see
400 .BR namespaces (7)
401 and
402 .BR pid_namespaces (7).
403 .IP
404 Only a privileged process
405 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
406 can employ
407 .BR CLONE_NEWPID .
408 This flag can't be specified in conjunction with
409 .BR CLONE_THREAD
410 or
411 .BR CLONE_PARENT .
412 .TP
413 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
414 (This flag first became meaningful for
415 .BR clone ()
416 in Linux 2.6.23,
417 the current
418 .BR clone ()
419 semantics were merged in Linux 3.5,
420 and the final pieces to make the user namespaces completely usable were
421 merged in Linux 3.8.)
422 .IP
423 If
424 .B CLONE_NEWUSER
425 is set, then create the process in a new user namespace.
426 If this flag is not set, then (as with
427 .BR fork (2))
428 the process is created in the same user namespace as the calling process.
429 .IP
430 Before Linux 3.8, use of
431 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
432 required that the caller have three capabilities:
433 .BR CAP_SYS_ADMIN ,
434 .BR CAP_SETUID ,
435 and
436 .BR CAP_SETGID .
437 .\" Before Linux 2.6.29, it appears that only CAP_SYS_ADMIN was needed
438 Starting with Linux 3.8,
439 no privileges are needed to create a user namespace.
440 .IP
441 This flag can't be specified in conjunction with
442 .BR CLONE_THREAD
443 or
444 .BR CLONE_PARENT .
445 For security reasons,
446 .\" commit e66eded8309ebf679d3d3c1f5820d1f2ca332c71
447 .\" https://lwn.net/Articles/543273/
448 .\" The fix actually went into 3.9 and into 3.8.3. However, user namespaces
449 .\" were, for practical purposes, unusable in earlier 3.8.x because of the
450 .\" various filesystems that didn't support userns.
451 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
452 cannot be specified in conjunction with
453 .BR CLONE_FS .
454 .IP
455 For further information on user namespaces, see
456 .BR namespaces (7)
457 and
458 .BR user_namespaces (7).
459 .TP
460 .BR CLONE_NEWUTS " (since Linux 2.6.19)"
461 If
462 .B CLONE_NEWUTS
463 is set, then create the process in a new UTS namespace,
464 whose identifiers are initialized by duplicating the identifiers
465 from the UTS namespace of the calling process.
466 If this flag is not set, then (as with
467 .BR fork (2))
468 the process is created in the same UTS namespace as
469 the calling process.
470 This flag is intended for the implementation of containers.
471 .IP
472 A UTS namespace is the set of identifiers returned by
473 .BR uname (2);
474 among these, the domain name and the hostname can be modified by
475 .BR setdomainname (2)
476 and
477 .BR sethostname (2),
478 respectively.
479 Changes made to the identifiers in a UTS namespace
480 are visible to all other processes in the same namespace,
481 but are not visible to processes in other UTS namespaces.
482 .IP
483 Only a privileged process
484 .RB ( CAP_SYS_ADMIN )
485 can employ
486 .BR CLONE_NEWUTS .
487 .IP
488 For further information on UTS namespaces, see
489 .BR namespaces (7).
490 .TP
491 .BR CLONE_PARENT " (since Linux 2.3.12)"
492 If
493 .B CLONE_PARENT
494 is set, then the parent of the new child (as returned by
495 .BR getppid (2))
496 will be the same as that of the calling process.
497 .IP
498 If
499 .B CLONE_PARENT
500 is not set, then (as with
501 .BR fork (2))
502 the child's parent is the calling process.
503 .IP
504 Note that it is the parent process, as returned by
505 .BR getppid (2),
506 which is signaled when the child terminates, so that
507 if
508 .B CLONE_PARENT
509 is set, then the parent of the calling process, rather than the
510 calling process itself, will be signaled.
511 .TP
512 .BR CLONE_PARENT_SETTID " (since Linux 2.5.49)"
513 Store the child thread ID at the location
514 .I ptid
515 in the parent's memory.
516 (In Linux 2.5.32-2.5.48 there was a flag
517 .B CLONE_SETTID
518 that did this.)
519 The store operation completes before
520 .BR clone ()
521 returns control to user space.
522 .TP
523 .BR CLONE_PID " (Linux 2.0 to 2.5.15)"
524 If
525 .B CLONE_PID
526 is set, the child process is created with the same process ID as
527 the calling process.
528 This is good for hacking the system, but otherwise
529 of not much use.
530 From Linux 2.3.21 onward, this flag could be
531 specified only by the system boot process (PID 0).
532 The flag disappeared completely from the kernel sources in Linux 2.5.16.
533 Since then, the kernel silently ignores this bit if it is specified in
534 .IR flags .
535 .TP
536 .BR CLONE_PTRACE " (since Linux 2.2)"
537 If
538 .B CLONE_PTRACE
539 is specified, and the calling process is being traced,
540 then trace the child also (see
541 .BR ptrace (2)).
542 .TP
543 .BR CLONE_SETTLS " (since Linux 2.5.32)"
544 The TLS (Thread Local Storage) descriptor is set to
545 .IR newtls .
546 .IP
547 The interpretation of
548 .I newtls
549 and the resulting effect is architecture dependent.
550 On x86,
551 .I newtls
552 is interpreted as a
553 .IR "struct user_desc\ *"
554 (see
555 .BR set_thread_area (2)).
556 On x86-64 it is the new value to be set for the %fs base register
557 (see the
558 .B ARCH_SET_FS
559 argument to
560 .BR arch_prctl (2)).
561 On architectures with a dedicated TLS register, it is the new value
562 of that register.
563 .TP
564 .BR CLONE_SIGHAND " (since Linux 2.0)"
565 If
566 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
567 is set, the calling process and the child process share the same table of
568 signal handlers.
569 If the calling process or child process calls
570 .BR sigaction (2)
571 to change the behavior associated with a signal, the behavior is
572 changed in the other process as well.
573 However, the calling process and child
574 processes still have distinct signal masks and sets of pending
575 signals.
576 So, one of them may block or unblock signals using
577 .BR sigprocmask (2)
578 without affecting the other process.
579 .IP
580 If
581 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
582 is not set, the child process inherits a copy of the signal handlers
583 of the calling process at the time
584 .BR clone ()
585 is called.
586 Calls to
587 .BR sigaction (2)
588 performed later by one of the processes have no effect on the other
589 process.
590 .IP
591 Since Linux 2.6.0-test6,
592 .I flags
593 must also include
594 .B CLONE_VM
595 if
596 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
597 is specified
598 .TP
599 .BR CLONE_STOPPED " (since Linux 2.6.0-test2)"
600 If
601 .B CLONE_STOPPED
602 is set, then the child is initially stopped (as though it was sent a
603 .B SIGSTOP
604 signal), and must be resumed by sending it a
605 .B SIGCONT
606 signal.
607 .IP
608 This flag was
609 .I deprecated
610 from Linux 2.6.25 onward,
611 and was
612 .I removed
613 altogether in Linux 2.6.38.
614 Since then, the kernel silently ignores it without error.
615 .\" glibc 2.8 removed this defn from bits/sched.h
616 Starting with Linux 4.6, the same bit was reused for the
617 .BR CLONE_NEWCGROUP
618 flag.
619 .TP
620 .BR CLONE_SYSVSEM " (since Linux 2.5.10)"
621 If
622 .B CLONE_SYSVSEM
623 is set, then the child and the calling process share
624 a single list of System V semaphore adjustment
625 .RI ( semadj )
626 values (see
627 .BR semop (2)).
628 In this case, the shared list accumulates
629 .I semadj
630 values across all processes sharing the list,
631 and semaphore adjustments are performed only when the last process
632 that is sharing the list terminates (or ceases sharing the list using
633 .BR unshare (2)).
634 If this flag is not set, then the child has a separate
635 .I semadj
636 list that is initially empty.
637 .TP
638 .BR CLONE_THREAD " (since Linux 2.4.0-test8)"
639 If
640 .B CLONE_THREAD
641 is set, the child is placed in the same thread group as the calling process.
642 To make the remainder of the discussion of
643 .B CLONE_THREAD
644 more readable, the term "thread" is used to refer to the
645 processes within a thread group.
646 .IP
647 Thread groups were a feature added in Linux 2.4 to support the
648 POSIX threads notion of a set of threads that share a single PID.
649 Internally, this shared PID is the so-called
650 thread group identifier (TGID) for the thread group.
651 Since Linux 2.4, calls to
652 .BR getpid (2)
653 return the TGID of the caller.
654 .IP
655 The threads within a group can be distinguished by their (system-wide)
656 unique thread IDs (TID).
657 A new thread's TID is available as the function result
658 returned to the caller of
659 .BR clone (),
660 and a thread can obtain
661 its own TID using
662 .BR gettid (2).
663 .IP
664 When a call is made to
665 .BR clone ()
666 without specifying
667 .BR CLONE_THREAD ,
668 then the resulting thread is placed in a new thread group
669 whose TGID is the same as the thread's TID.
670 This thread is the
671 .I leader
672 of the new thread group.
673 .IP
674 A new thread created with
675 .B CLONE_THREAD
676 has the same parent process as the caller of
677 .BR clone ()
678 (i.e., like
679 .BR CLONE_PARENT ),
680 so that calls to
681 .BR getppid (2)
682 return the same value for all of the threads in a thread group.
683 When a
684 .B CLONE_THREAD
685 thread terminates, the thread that created it using
686 .BR clone ()
687 is not sent a
688 .B SIGCHLD
689 (or other termination) signal;
690 nor can the status of such a thread be obtained
691 using
692 .BR wait (2).
693 (The thread is said to be
694 .IR detached .)
695 .IP
696 After all of the threads in a thread group terminate
697 the parent process of the thread group is sent a
698 .B SIGCHLD
699 (or other termination) signal.
700 .IP
701 If any of the threads in a thread group performs an
702 .BR execve (2),
703 then all threads other than the thread group leader are terminated,
704 and the new program is executed in the thread group leader.
705 .IP
706 If one of the threads in a thread group creates a child using
707 .BR fork (2),
708 then any thread in the group can
709 .BR wait (2)
710 for that child.
711 .IP
712 Since Linux 2.5.35,
713 .I flags
714 must also include
715 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
716 if
717 .B CLONE_THREAD
718 is specified
719 (and note that, since Linux 2.6.0-test6,
720 .BR CLONE_SIGHAND
721 also requires
722 .BR CLONE_VM
723 to be included).
724 .IP
725 Signal dispositions and actions are process-wide:
726 if an unhandled signal is delivered to a thread, then
727 it will affect (terminate, stop, continue, be ignored in)
728 all members of the thread group.
729 .IP
730 Each thread has its own signal mask, as set by
731 .BR sigprocmask (2).
732 .IP
733 A signal may be process-directed or thread-directed.
734 A process-directed signal is targeted at a thread group (i.e., a TGID),
735 and is delivered to an arbitrarily selected thread from among those
736 that are not blocking the signal.
737 A signal may be process directed because it is was generated by the kernel
738 for reasons other than a hardware exception, or because it was sent using
739 .BR kill (2)
740 or
741 .BR sigqueue (3).
742 A thread-directed signal is targeted at (i.e., delivered to)
743 a specific thread.
744 A signal may be thread directed because it was sent using
745 .BR tgkill (2)
746 or
747 .BR pthread_sigqueue (3),
748 or because the thread executed a machine language instruction that triggered
749 a hardware exception
750 (e.g., invalid memory access triggering
751 .BR SIGSEGV
752 or a floating-point exception triggering
753 .BR SIGFPE ).
754 .IP
755 A call to
756 .BR sigpending (2)
757 returns a signal set that is the union of the pending process-directed
758 signals and the signals that are pending for the calling thread.
759 .IP
760 If a process-directed signal is delivered to a thread group,
761 and the thread group has installed a handler for the signal, then
762 the handler will be invoked in exactly one, arbitrarily selected
763 member of the thread group that has not blocked the signal.
764 If multiple threads in a group are waiting to accept the same signal using
765 .BR sigwaitinfo (2),
766 the kernel will arbitrarily select one of these threads
767 to receive the signal.
768 .TP
769 .BR CLONE_UNTRACED " (since Linux 2.5.46)"
770 If
771 .B CLONE_UNTRACED
772 is specified, then a tracing process cannot force
773 .B CLONE_PTRACE
774 on this child process.
775 .TP
776 .BR CLONE_VFORK " (since Linux 2.2)"
777 If
778 .B CLONE_VFORK
779 is set, the execution of the calling process is suspended
780 until the child releases its virtual memory
781 resources via a call to
782 .BR execve (2)
783 or
784 .BR _exit (2)
785 (as with
786 .BR vfork (2)).
787 .IP
788 If
789 .B CLONE_VFORK
790 is not set, then both the calling process and the child are schedulable
791 after the call, and an application should not rely on execution occurring
792 in any particular order.
793 .TP
794 .BR CLONE_VM " (since Linux 2.0)"
795 If
796 .B CLONE_VM
797 is set, the calling process and the child process run in the same memory
798 space.
799 In particular, memory writes performed by the calling process
800 or by the child process are also visible in the other process.
801 Moreover, any memory mapping or unmapping performed with
802 .BR mmap (2)
803 or
804 .BR munmap (2)
805 by the child or calling process also affects the other process.
806 .IP
807 If
808 .B CLONE_VM
809 is not set, the child process runs in a separate copy of the memory
810 space of the calling process at the time of
811 .BR clone ().
812 Memory writes or file mappings/unmappings performed by one of the
813 processes do not affect the other, as with
814 .BR fork (2).
815 .SH NOTES
816 Note that the glibc
817 .BR clone ()
818 wrapper function makes some changes
819 in the memory pointed to by
820 .I child_stack
821 (changes required to set the stack up correctly for the child)
822 .I before
823 invoking the
824 .BR clone ()
825 system call.
826 So, in cases where
827 .BR clone ()
828 is used to recursively create children,
829 do not use the buffer employed for the parent's stack
830 as the stack of the child.
831 .\"
832 .SS C library/kernel differences
833 The raw
834 .BR clone ()
835 system call corresponds more closely to
836 .BR fork (2)
837 in that execution in the child continues from the point of the
838 call.
839 As such, the
840 .I fn
841 and
842 .I arg
843 arguments of the
844 .BR clone ()
845 wrapper function are omitted.
846 .PP
847 Another difference for the raw
848 .BR clone ()
849 system call is that the
850 .I child_stack
851 argument may be NULL,
852 in which case the child uses a duplicate of the parent's stack.
853 (Copy-on-write semantics ensure that the child gets separate copies
854 of stack pages when either process modifies the stack.)
855 In this case, for correct operation, the
856 .B CLONE_VM
857 option should not be specified.
858 (If the child
859 .I shares
860 the parent's memory because of the use of the
861 .BR CLONE_VM
862 flag,
863 then no copy-on-write duplication occurs and chaos is likely to result.)
864 .PP
865 The order of the arguments also differs in the raw system call,
866 and there are variations in the arguments across architectures,
867 as detailed in the following paragraphs.
868 .PP
869 The raw system call interface on x86-64 and some other architectures
870 (including sh, tile, ia-64, and alpha) is:
871 .PP
872 .in +4
873 .EX
874 .BI "long clone(unsigned long " flags ", void *" child_stack ,
875 .BI " int *" ptid ", int *" ctid ,
876 .BI " unsigned long " newtls );
877 .EE
878 .in
879 .PP
880 On x86-32, and several other common architectures
881 (including score, ARM, ARM 64, PA-RISC, arc, Power PC, xtensa,
882 and MIPS),
883 .\" CONFIG_CLONE_BACKWARDS
884 the order of the last two arguments is reversed:
885 .PP
886 .in +4
887 .EX
888 .BI "long clone(unsigned long " flags ", void *" child_stack ,
889 .BI " int *" ptid ", unsigned long " newtls ,
890 .BI " int *" ctid );
891 .EE
892 .in
893 .PP
894 On the cris and s390 architectures,
895 .\" CONFIG_CLONE_BACKWARDS2
896 the order of the first two arguments is reversed:
897 .PP
898 .in +4
899 .EX
900 .BI "long clone(void *" child_stack ", unsigned long " flags ,
901 .BI " int *" ptid ", int *" ctid ,
902 .BI " unsigned long " newtls );
903 .EE
904 .in
905 .PP
906 On the microblaze architecture,
907 .\" CONFIG_CLONE_BACKWARDS3
908 an additional argument is supplied:
909 .PP
910 .in +4
911 .EX
912 .BI "long clone(unsigned long " flags ", void *" child_stack ,
913 .BI " int " stack_size , "\fR /* Size of stack */"
914 .BI " int *" ptid ", int *" ctid ,
915 .BI " unsigned long " newtls );
916 .EE
917 .in
918 .\"
919 .SS blackfin, m68k, and sparc
920 .\" Mike Frysinger noted in a 2013 mail:
921 .\" these arches don't define __ARCH_WANT_SYS_CLONE:
922 .\" blackfin ia64 m68k sparc
923 The argument-passing conventions on
924 blackfin, m68k, and sparc are different from the descriptions above.
925 For details, see the kernel (and glibc) source.
926 .SS ia64
927 On ia64, a different interface is used:
928 .PP
929 .in +4
930 .EX
931 .BI "int __clone2(int (*" "fn" ")(void *), "
932 .BI " void *" child_stack_base ", size_t " stack_size ,
933 .BI " int " flags ", void *" "arg" ", ... "
934 .BI " /* pid_t *" ptid ", struct user_desc *" tls \
935 ", pid_t *" ctid " */ );"
936 .EE
937 .in
938 .PP
939 The prototype shown above is for the glibc wrapper function; for the syscall
940 itself, prototype can be described as follows (it is identical to the
941 .BR clone ()
942 prototype on microblaze):
943 .PP
944 .in +4
945 .EX
946 .BI "long clone2(unsigned long " flags ", void *" child_stack_base ,
947 .BI " int " stack_size , "\fR /* Size of stack */"
948 .BI " int *" ptid ", int *" ctid ,
949 .BI " unsigned long " tls );
950 .EE
951 .in
952 .PP
953 .BR __clone2 ()
954 operates in the same way as
955 .BR clone (),
956 except that
957 .I child_stack_base
958 points to the lowest address of the child's stack area,
959 and
960 .I stack_size
961 specifies the size of the stack pointed to by
962 .IR child_stack_base .
963 .SS Linux 2.4 and earlier
964 In Linux 2.4 and earlier,
965 .BR clone ()
966 does not take arguments
967 .IR ptid ,
968 .IR tls ,
969 and
970 .IR ctid .
971 .SH RETURN VALUE
972 .\" gettid(2) returns current->pid;
973 .\" getpid(2) returns current->tgid;
974 On success, the thread ID of the child process is returned
975 in the caller's thread of execution.
976 On failure, \-1 is returned
977 in the caller's context, no child process will be created, and
978 .I errno
979 will be set appropriately.
980 .SH ERRORS
981 .TP
982 .B EAGAIN
983 Too many processes are already running; see
984 .BR fork (2).
985 .TP
986 .B EINVAL
987 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
988 was specified, but
989 .B CLONE_VM
990 was not.
991 (Since Linux 2.6.0-test6.)
992 .TP
993 .B EINVAL
994 .B CLONE_THREAD
995 was specified, but
996 .B CLONE_SIGHAND
997 was not.
998 (Since Linux 2.5.35.)
999 .\" .TP
1000 .\" .B EINVAL
1001 .\" Precisely one of
1002 .\" .B CLONE_DETACHED
1003 .\" and
1004 .\" .B CLONE_THREAD
1005 .\" was specified.
1006 .\" (Since Linux 2.6.0-test6.)
1007 .TP
1008 .B EINVAL
1009 .\" commit e66eded8309ebf679d3d3c1f5820d1f2ca332c71
1010 Both
1011 .B CLONE_FS
1012 and
1013 .B CLONE_NEWNS
1014 were specified in
1015 .IR flags .
1016 .TP
1017 .BR EINVAL " (since Linux 3.9)"
1018 Both
1019 .B CLONE_NEWUSER
1020 and
1021 .B CLONE_FS
1022 were specified in
1023 .IR flags .
1024 .TP
1025 .B EINVAL
1026 Both
1027 .B CLONE_NEWIPC
1028 and
1029 .B CLONE_SYSVSEM
1030 were specified in
1031 .IR flags .
1032 .TP
1033 .B EINVAL
1034 One (or both) of
1035 .BR CLONE_NEWPID
1036 or
1037 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
1038 and one (or both) of
1039 .BR CLONE_THREAD
1040 or
1041 .BR CLONE_PARENT
1042 were specified in
1043 .IR flags .
1044 .TP
1045 .B EINVAL
1046 Returned by the glibc
1047 .BR clone ()
1048 wrapper function when
1049 .IR fn
1050 or
1051 .IR child_stack
1052 is specified as NULL.
1053 .TP
1054 .B EINVAL
1055 .BR CLONE_NEWIPC
1056 was specified in
1057 .IR flags ,
1058 but the kernel was not configured with the
1059 .B CONFIG_SYSVIPC
1060 and
1061 .BR CONFIG_IPC_NS
1062 options.
1063 .TP
1064 .B EINVAL
1065 .BR CLONE_NEWNET
1066 was specified in
1067 .IR flags ,
1068 but the kernel was not configured with the
1069 .B CONFIG_NET_NS
1070 option.
1071 .TP
1072 .B EINVAL
1073 .BR CLONE_NEWPID
1074 was specified in
1075 .IR flags ,
1076 but the kernel was not configured with the
1077 .B CONFIG_PID_NS
1078 option.
1079 .TP
1080 .B EINVAL
1081 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
1082 was specified in
1083 .IR flags ,
1084 but the kernel was not configured with the
1085 .B CONFIG_USER_NS
1086 option.
1087 .TP
1088 .B EINVAL
1089 .BR CLONE_NEWUTS
1090 was specified in
1091 .IR flags ,
1092 but the kernel was not configured with the
1093 .B CONFIG_UTS_NS
1094 option.
1095 .TP
1096 .B EINVAL
1097 .I child_stack
1098 is not aligned to a suitable boundary for this architecture.
1099 For example, on aarch64,
1100 .I child_stack
1101 must be a multiple of 16.
1102 .TP
1103 .B ENOMEM
1104 Cannot allocate sufficient memory to allocate a task structure for the
1105 child, or to copy those parts of the caller's context that need to be
1106 copied.
1107 .TP
1108 .BR ENOSPC " (since Linux 3.7)"
1109 .\" commit f2302505775fd13ba93f034206f1e2a587017929
1110 .B CLONE_NEWPID
1111 was specified in flags,
1112 but the limit on the nesting depth of PID namespaces
1113 would have been exceeded; see
1114 .BR pid_namespaces (7).
1115 .TP
1116 .BR ENOSPC " (since Linux 4.9; beforehand " EUSERS )
1117 .B CLONE_NEWUSER
1118 was specified in
1119 .IR flags ,
1120 and the call would cause the limit on the number of
1121 nested user namespaces to be exceeded.
1122 See
1123 .BR user_namespaces (7).
1124 .IP
1125 From Linux 3.11 to Linux 4.8, the error diagnosed in this case was
1126 .BR EUSERS .
1127 .TP
1128 .BR ENOSPC " (since Linux 4.9)"
1129 One of the values in
1130 .I flags
1131 specified the creation of a new user namespace,
1132 but doing so would have caused the limit defined by the corresponding file in
1133 .IR /proc/sys/user
1134 to be exceeded.
1135 For further details, see
1136 .BR namespaces (7).
1137 .TP
1138 .B EPERM
1139 .BR CLONE_NEWCGROUP ,
1140 .BR CLONE_NEWIPC ,
1141 .BR CLONE_NEWNET ,
1142 .BR CLONE_NEWNS ,
1143 .BR CLONE_NEWPID ,
1144 or
1145 .BR CLONE_NEWUTS
1146 was specified by an unprivileged process (process without \fBCAP_SYS_ADMIN\fP).
1147 .TP
1148 .B EPERM
1149 .B CLONE_PID
1150 was specified by a process other than process 0.
1151 (This error occurs only on Linux 2.5.15 and earlier.)
1152 .TP
1153 .B EPERM
1154 .BR CLONE_NEWUSER
1155 was specified in
1156 .IR flags ,
1157 but either the effective user ID or the effective group ID of the caller
1158 does not have a mapping in the parent namespace (see
1159 .BR user_namespaces (7)).
1160 .TP
1161 .BR EPERM " (since Linux 3.9)"
1162 .\" commit 3151527ee007b73a0ebd296010f1c0454a919c7d
1163 .B CLONE_NEWUSER
1164 was specified in
1165 .I flags
1166 and the caller is in a chroot environment
1167 .\" FIXME What is the rationale for this restriction?
1168 (i.e., the caller's root directory does not match the root directory
1169 of the mount namespace in which it resides).
1170 .TP
1171 .BR ERESTARTNOINTR " (since Linux 2.6.17)"
1172 .\" commit 4a2c7a7837da1b91468e50426066d988050e4d56
1173 System call was interrupted by a signal and will be restarted.
1174 (This can be seen only during a trace.)
1175 .TP
1176 .BR EUSERS " (Linux 3.11 to Linux 4.8)"
1177 .B CLONE_NEWUSER
1178 was specified in
1179 .IR flags ,
1180 and the limit on the number of nested user namespaces would be exceeded.
1181 See the discussion of the
1182 .BR ENOSPC
1183 error above.
1184 .\" .SH VERSIONS
1185 .\" There is no entry for
1186 .\" .BR clone ()
1187 .\" in libc5.
1188 .\" glibc2 provides
1189 .\" .BR clone ()
1190 .\" as described in this manual page.
1191 .SH CONFORMING TO
1192 .BR clone ()
1193 is Linux-specific and should not be used in programs
1194 intended to be portable.
1195 .SH NOTES
1196 The
1197 .BR kcmp (2)
1198 system call can be used to test whether two processes share various
1199 resources such as a file descriptor table,
1200 System V semaphore undo operations, or a virtual address space.
1201 .PP
1202 .PP
1203 Handlers registered using
1204 .BR pthread_atfork (3)
1205 are not executed during a call to
1206 .BR clone ().
1207 .PP
1208 In the Linux 2.4.x series,
1209 .B CLONE_THREAD
1210 generally does not make the parent of the new thread the same
1211 as the parent of the calling process.
1212 However, for kernel versions 2.4.7 to 2.4.18 the
1213 .B CLONE_THREAD
1214 flag implied the
1215 .B CLONE_PARENT
1216 flag (as in Linux 2.6.0 and later).
1217 .PP
1218 For a while there was
1219 .B CLONE_DETACHED
1220 (introduced in 2.5.32):
1221 parent wants no child-exit signal.
1222 In Linux 2.6.2, the need to give this flag together with
1223 .B CLONE_THREAD
1224 disappeared.
1225 This flag is still defined, but has no effect.
1226 .PP
1227 On i386,
1228 .BR clone ()
1229 should not be called through vsyscall, but directly through
1230 .IR "int $0x80" .
1231 .SH BUGS
1232 GNU C library versions 2.3.4 up to and including 2.24
1233 contained a wrapper function for
1234 .BR getpid (2)
1235 that performed caching of PIDs.
1236 This caching relied on support in the glibc wrapper for
1237 .BR clone (),
1238 but limitations in the implementation
1239 meant that the cache was not up to date in some circumstances.
1240 In particular,
1241 if a signal was delivered to the child immediately after the
1242 .BR clone ()
1243 call, then a call to
1244 .BR getpid (2)
1245 in a handler for the signal could return the PID
1246 of the calling process ("the parent"),
1247 if the clone wrapper had not yet had a chance to update the PID
1248 cache in the child.
1249 (This discussion ignores the case where the child was created using
1250 .BR CLONE_THREAD ,
1251 when
1252 .BR getpid (2)
1253 .I should
1254 return the same value in the child and in the process that called
1255 .BR clone (),
1256 since the caller and the child are in the same thread group.
1257 The stale-cache problem also does not occur if the
1258 .I flags
1259 argument includes
1260 .BR CLONE_VM .)
1261 To get the truth, it was sometimes necessary to use code such as the following:
1262 .PP
1263 .in +4n
1264 .EX
1265 #include <syscall.h>
1266
1267 pid_t mypid;
1268
1269 mypid = syscall(SYS_getpid);
1270 .EE
1271 .in
1272 .\" See also the following bug reports
1273 .\" https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=417521
1274 .\" http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6910
1275 .PP
1276 Because of the stale-cache problem, as well as other problems noted in
1277 .BR getpid (2),
1278 the PID caching feature was removed in glibc 2.25.
1279 .SH EXAMPLE
1280 The following program demonstrates the use of
1281 .BR clone ()
1282 to create a child process that executes in a separate UTS namespace.
1283 The child changes the hostname in its UTS namespace.
1284 Both parent and child then display the system hostname,
1285 making it possible to see that the hostname
1286 differs in the UTS namespaces of the parent and child.
1287 For an example of the use of this program, see
1288 .BR setns (2).
1289 .SS Program source
1290 .EX
1291 #define _GNU_SOURCE
1292 #include <sys/wait.h>
1293 #include <sys/utsname.h>
1294 #include <sched.h>
1295 #include <string.h>
1296 #include <stdio.h>
1297 #include <stdlib.h>
1298 #include <unistd.h>
1299
1300 #define errExit(msg) do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); \\
1301 } while (0)
1302
1303 static int /* Start function for cloned child */
1304 childFunc(void *arg)
1305 {
1306 struct utsname uts;
1307
1308 /* Change hostname in UTS namespace of child */
1309
1310 if (sethostname(arg, strlen(arg)) == \-1)
1311 errExit("sethostname");
1312
1313 /* Retrieve and display hostname */
1314
1315 if (uname(&uts) == \-1)
1316 errExit("uname");
1317 printf("uts.nodename in child: %s\\n", uts.nodename);
1318
1319 /* Keep the namespace open for a while, by sleeping.
1320 This allows some experimentation\-\-for example, another
1321 process might join the namespace. */
1322
1323 sleep(200);
1324
1325 return 0; /* Child terminates now */
1326 }
1327
1328 #define STACK_SIZE (1024 * 1024) /* Stack size for cloned child */
1329
1330 int
1331 main(int argc, char *argv[])
1332 {
1333 char *stack; /* Start of stack buffer */
1334 char *stackTop; /* End of stack buffer */
1335 pid_t pid;
1336 struct utsname uts;
1337
1338 if (argc < 2) {
1339 fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <child\-hostname>\\n", argv[0]);
1340 exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
1341 }
1342
1343 /* Allocate stack for child */
1344
1345 stack = malloc(STACK_SIZE);
1346 if (stack == NULL)
1347 errExit("malloc");
1348 stackTop = stack + STACK_SIZE; /* Assume stack grows downward */
1349
1350 /* Create child that has its own UTS namespace;
1351 child commences execution in childFunc() */
1352
1353 pid = clone(childFunc, stackTop, CLONE_NEWUTS | SIGCHLD, argv[1]);
1354 if (pid == \-1)
1355 errExit("clone");
1356 printf("clone() returned %ld\\n", (long) pid);
1357
1358 /* Parent falls through to here */
1359
1360 sleep(1); /* Give child time to change its hostname */
1361
1362 /* Display hostname in parent\(aqs UTS namespace. This will be
1363 different from hostname in child\(aqs UTS namespace. */
1364
1365 if (uname(&uts) == \-1)
1366 errExit("uname");
1367 printf("uts.nodename in parent: %s\\n", uts.nodename);
1368
1369 if (waitpid(pid, NULL, 0) == \-1) /* Wait for child */
1370 errExit("waitpid");
1371 printf("child has terminated\\n");
1372
1373 exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
1374 }
1375 .EE
1376 .SH SEE ALSO
1377 .BR fork (2),
1378 .BR futex (2),
1379 .BR getpid (2),
1380 .BR gettid (2),
1381 .BR kcmp (2),
1382 .BR set_thread_area (2),
1383 .BR set_tid_address (2),
1384 .BR setns (2),
1385 .BR tkill (2),
1386 .BR unshare (2),
1387 .BR wait (2),
1388 .BR capabilities (7),
1389 .BR namespaces (7),
1390 .BR pthreads (7)