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Message-ID: <20150405202314.GG6817@brightrain.aerifal.cx> Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2015 16:23:14 -0400 From: Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org> To: musl@...ts.openwall.com Subject: Re: Resuming work on new semaphore On Sun, Apr 05, 2015 at 11:03:34PM +0300, Alexander Monakov wrote: > On Sun, 5 Apr 2015, Rich Felker wrote: > > 1. Thread A enters sem_wait. > > 2. Thread B observes thread A in sem_wait via failed sem_trywait. > > Hm, I don't see how that can be achieved. As a result I'm afraid I didn't > fully understand your example. Indeed I was wrong about that, so I agree the whole scenario may fall apart. Only sem_getvalue could show this, and only if it returns -1 rather than 0. So returning negative values from sem_getvalue seems like a very bad idea -- it puts difficult- or impossible-to-satisfy additional constraints on the implementation. > > > Well we can make sem_getvalue return val[0]+val[1] instead... ;) > > > > That just makes the new implementation look like the old one, no? :-) > > Can't be bad if it behaves the same but works a bit faster. > Apropos, like I've said on IRC, looks like there's "semaphore uncertainty > principle": that formal semaphore value is between val[0] and (val[0] +/- > val[1]) (clamped to 0 as needed). It seems you can either do your hack and > pretend that there are never any waiters, or try to faithfully count waiters > in sem_getvalue, but then also reveal that sometimes the implementation works > by stealing a post. I believe you could argue that the latter is explicitely > disallowed by the spec. Yes, I think I agree. > By the way, I think there's an interesting interplay with cancellation. > Consider the following. Thread B does "return sem_wait(sem);". Thread A does: > > pthread_cancel(thread_B); > sem_post(sem); > sem_getvalue(sem); > > If it observes semaphore value as 1 it follows that thread B has not become a > waiter yet, and since it must have cancellation already pending, it may not > consume the post. And yet if thread B is already futex-waiting in sem_wait, > consuming the post takes priority over acting on cancellation. So if then > thread A does > > pthread_join(thread_B); > sem_getvalue(sem); > > and gets value of 0, it sees a contradiction. And return value from > pthread_join will indicate that thread_B exited normally rather than was > cancelled. So the contradiction you claim exists is that cancellation happened before the post, and thus thread B can't act on the post when it didn't act on cancellation? I don't think that follows from the rules of cancellation. The relevant text is: "Whenever a thread has cancelability enabled and a cancellation request has been made with that thread as the target, and the thread then calls any function that is a cancellation point (such as pthread_testcancel() or read()), the cancellation request shall be acted upon before the function." So if cancellation was pending _before_ the call to sem_wait, then sem_wait has to honor it. But there is no requirement that entry to the sem_wait function be "atomic" with becoming a waiter on the semaphore, and of course this is impossible to satisfy or even specify. So it's totally legal to have the sequence: 1. Thread B enters sem_wait. 2. Thread B observes that cancellation was not already pending. 3. Thread A sends cancellation request. 4. Thread A sends post. 5. Thread B receives both, and chooses to act on the post per this text: "It is unspecified whether the cancellation request is acted upon or whether the cancellation request remains pending and the thread resumes normal execution if: - The thread is suspended at a cancellation point and the event for which it is waiting occurs - A specified timeout expired before the cancellation request is acted upon." Here, the event for which it was waiting (the post) clearly occurs. > And on the contrary, if you make acting on cancellation/timeout take priority, > you can observe semaphore value increasing when waiters leave the wait on > error path without consuming the post. Yes obviously that is not possible. Rich
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