followed are: Only 3 functions (pthread_cancel, pthread_setcancelstate,
pthread_setcanceltype) are required to be async-signal-safe by POSIX. None of
the rest of the pthread api is required to be async-signal-safe. This means
that only the three mentioned functions are safe to use from inside
signal handlers.
However, there are certain system/libc calls that are
cancellation points that a caller may call from within a signal handler,
and since they are cancellation points calls have to be made into libthr
to test for cancellation and exit the thread if necessary. So, the
cancellation test and thread exit code paths must be async-signal-safe
as well. A summary of the changes follows:
o Almost all of the code paths that masked signals, as well as locking the
pthread structure now lock only the pthread structure.
o Signals are masked (and left that way) as soon as a thread enters
pthread_exit().
o The active and dead threads locks now explicitly require that signals
are masked.
o Access to the isdead field of the pthread structure is protected by both
the active and dead list locks for writing. Either one is sufficient for
reading.
o The thread state and type fields have been combined into one three-state
switch to make it easier to read without requiring a lock. It doesn't need
a lock for writing (and therefore for reading either) because only the
current thread can write to it and it is an integer value.
o The thread state field of the pthread structure has been eliminated. It
was an unnecessary field that mostly duplicated the flags field, but
required additional locking that would make a lot more code paths require
signal masking. Any truly unique values (such as PS_DEAD) have been
reborn as separate members of the pthread structure.
o Since the mutex and condvar pthread functions are not async-signal-safe
there is no need to muck about with the wait queues when handling
a signal ...
o ... which also removes the need for wrapping signal handlers and sigaction(2).
o The condvar and mutex async-cancellation code had to be revised as a result
of some of these changes, which resulted in semi-unrelated changes which
would have been difficult to work on as a separate commit, so they are
included as well.
The only part of the changes I am worried about is related to locking for
the pthread joining fields. But, I will take a closer look at them once this
mega-patch is committed.
a list in the thread structure to keep track of the locks and
how many times they have been locked. This list is checked
on every lock and unlock. The traversal through the list is
O(n). Most applications don't hold so many locks at once that
this will become a problem. However, if it does become a problem
it might be a good idea to review this once libthr is
off probation and in the optimization cycle.
This fixes:
o deadlock when a thread tries to recursively acquire a
read lock when a writer is waiting on the lock.
o a thread could previously successfully unlock a lock it did not own
o deadlock when a thread tries to acquire a write lock on
a lock it already owns for reading or writing [ this is admittedly
not required by POSIX, but is nice to have ]
The dead list thread is sufficient for synchronization.
Retire the arch_id (ldt array slot) in the gc thread instead of the
doing it in the thread itself.
Approved by: re/jhb
joiner by making sure all locks and unlocks occur in the same order. For
the record the lock order is: DEAD_LIST, THREAD_LIST, exiting thread, joiner
thread.
Approved by: re/rwatson
list is protected by a spinlock_t, but the dead list uses a pthread_mutex
because it is necessary to synchronize other threads with the garbage
collector thread. Lock/Unlock macros are used so it's easier to make
changes to the locks in the future.
The 'dead thread list' lock is intended to replace the gc mutex.
This doesn't have any practical ramifications. It simply makes it
clearer what the purpose of the lock is. The gc will use this lock,
instead of the gc mutex, to synchronize access to the dead list with
other threads.
Modify _pthread_exit() to use these two new locks instead of GIANT_LOCK,
and also to properly lock and protect thread state changes,
especially with respect to a joining thread.
The gc thread was also re-arranged to be more organized and less nested.
_pthread_join() was also modified to use the thread list locks. However,
locking and unlocking here needs special care because a thread could find
itself in a position where it's joining an exiting thread that is
waiting on the dead list lock, which this thread (joiner) holds. If the
joiner doesn't take care to lock *and* unlock in the same order they
(the joiner and the joinee) could deadlock against each other.
Approved by: re/blanket libthr
is the *only* remaining thread in the application, in which case we
should not core dump, and instead exit gracefully.
Approved by: markm/mentor, re/blanket libthr
_get_curthread(). This is similar to the kernel's curthread. Doing
this saves stack overhead and is more convenient to the programmer.
- Pass the pointer to the newly created thread to _thread_init().
- Remove _get_curthread_slow().
