The condition occurs when
- thread #1 is holding the lock
- thread #2 is waiting for it on __futexwait
- thread #1 is about to release the lock and performs a_swap
- thread #3 enters the __lockfile function and manages to grab the lock
before thread #1 calls __wake, resetting the MAYBE_WAITERS flag
- thread #1 calls __wake
- thread #2 wakes up but goes again to __futexwait as the lock is
held by thread #3
- thread #3 releases the lock but does not call __wake as the
MAYBE_WAITERS flag is not set
This condition results in thread #2 not being woken up. This patch fixes
the problem by making the woken up thread ensure that the flag is
properly set before going to sleep again.
Mainainer's note: This fixes a regression introduced in commit
c21f750727.
instead of using a waiters count, add a bit to the lock field
indicating that the lock may have waiters. threads which obtain the
lock after contending for it will perform a potentially-spurious wake
when they release the lock.
for now this is just a tiny optimization, but later if we support
cancellation from __stdio_read and __stdio_write, it will be necessary
for the recusrive lock count to be zero in order for these functions
to know they are responsible for unlocking the FILE on cancellation.
previously, stdio used spinlocks, which would be unacceptable if we
ever add support for thread priorities, and which yielded
pathologically bad performance if an application attempted to use
flockfile on a key file as a major/primary locking mechanism.
i had held off on making this change for fear that it would hurt
performance in the non-threaded case, but actually support for
recursive locking had already inflicted that cost. by having the
internal locking functions store a flag indicating whether they need
to perform unlocking, rather than using the actual recursive lock
counter, i was able to combine the conditionals at unlock time,
eliminating any additional cost, and also avoid a nasty corner case
where a huge number of calls to ftrylockfile could cause deadlock
later at the point of internal locking.
this commit also fixes some issues with usage of pthread_self
conflicting with __attribute__((const)) which resulted in crashes with
some compiler versions/optimizations, mainly in flockfile prior to
pthread_create.
these should be tweaked according to testing. offhand i know 1000 is
too low and 5000 is likely to be sufficiently high. consider trying to
add futexes to file locking, too...
don't waste time (and significant code size due to function call
overhead!) setting errno when the result of a syscall does not matter
or when it can't fail.