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authorRich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>2013-09-20 02:00:27 -0400
committerRich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>2013-09-20 02:00:27 -0400
commite803829e6b087c0ed91adc11f87185109bc59b31 (patch)
treead2fdda58fbba2c542785d9cc8babcd5f7d001ec /include/pwd.h
parentd8e283df58eb8bff1aa2f8a99347e294c7f67cb9 (diff)
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fix potential deadlock bug in libc-internal locking logic
if a multithreaded program became non-multithreaded (i.e. all other
threads exited) while one thread held an internal lock, the remaining
thread would fail to release the lock. the the program then became
multithreaded again at a later time, any further attempts to obtain
the lock would deadlock permanently.

the underlying cause is that the value of libc.threads_minus_1 at
unlock time might not match the value at lock time. one solution would
be returning a flag to the caller indicating whether the lock was
taken and needs to be unlocked, but there is a simpler solution: using
the lock itself as such a flag.

note that this flag is not needed anyway for correctness; if the lock
is not held, the unlock code is harmless. however, the memory
synchronization properties associated with a_store are costly on some
archs, so it's best to avoid executing the unlock code when it is
unnecessary.
Diffstat (limited to 'include/pwd.h')
0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions