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<title>musl/src/thread/sem_open.c, branch v1.2.6</title>
<subtitle>musl - an implementation of the standard library for Linux-based systems</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/'/>
<entry>
<title>lift child restrictions after multi-threaded fork</title>
<updated>2020-11-11T20:55:30+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2020-11-11T18:37:33+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=167390f05564e0a4d3fcb4329377fd7743267560'/>
<id>167390f05564e0a4d3fcb4329377fd7743267560</id>
<content type='text'>
as the outcome of Austin Group tracker issue #62, future editions of
POSIX have dropped the requirement that fork be AS-safe. this allows
but does not require implementations to synchronize fork with internal
locks and give forked children of multithreaded parents a partly or
fully unrestricted execution environment where they can continue to
use the standard library (per POSIX, they can only portably use
AS-safe functions).

up until recently, taking this allowance did not seem desirable.
however, commit 8ed2bd8bfcb4ea6448afb55a941f4b5b2b0398c0 exposed the
extent to which applications and libraries are depending on the
ability to use malloc and other non-AS-safe interfaces in MT-forked
children, by converting latent very-low-probability catastrophic state
corruption into predictable deadlock. dealing with the fallout has
been a huge burden for users/distros.

while it looks like most of the non-portable usage in applications
could be fixed given sufficient effort, at least some of it seems to
occur in language runtimes which are exposing the ability to run
unrestricted code in the child as part of the contract with the
programmer. any attempt at fixing such contracts is not just a
technical problem but a social one, and is probably not tractable.

this patch extends the fork function to take locks for all libc
singletons in the parent, and release or reset those locks in the
child, so that when the underlying fork operation takes place, the
state protected by these locks is consistent and ready for the child
to use. locking is skipped in the case where the parent is
single-threaded so as not to interfere with legacy AS-safety property
of fork in single-threaded programs. lock order is mostly arbitrary,
but the malloc locks (including bump allocator in case it's used) must
be taken after the locks on any subsystems that might use malloc, and
non-AS-safe locks cannot be taken while the thread list lock is held,
imposing a requirement that it be taken last.
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
as the outcome of Austin Group tracker issue #62, future editions of
POSIX have dropped the requirement that fork be AS-safe. this allows
but does not require implementations to synchronize fork with internal
locks and give forked children of multithreaded parents a partly or
fully unrestricted execution environment where they can continue to
use the standard library (per POSIX, they can only portably use
AS-safe functions).

up until recently, taking this allowance did not seem desirable.
however, commit 8ed2bd8bfcb4ea6448afb55a941f4b5b2b0398c0 exposed the
extent to which applications and libraries are depending on the
ability to use malloc and other non-AS-safe interfaces in MT-forked
children, by converting latent very-low-probability catastrophic state
corruption into predictable deadlock. dealing with the fallout has
been a huge burden for users/distros.

while it looks like most of the non-portable usage in applications
could be fixed given sufficient effort, at least some of it seems to
occur in language runtimes which are exposing the ability to run
unrestricted code in the child as part of the contract with the
programmer. any attempt at fixing such contracts is not just a
technical problem but a social one, and is probably not tractable.

this patch extends the fork function to take locks for all libc
singletons in the parent, and release or reset those locks in the
child, so that when the underlying fork operation takes place, the
state protected by these locks is consistent and ready for the child
to use. locking is skipped in the case where the parent is
single-threaded so as not to interfere with legacy AS-safety property
of fork in single-threaded programs. lock order is mostly arbitrary,
but the malloc locks (including bump allocator in case it's used) must
be taken after the locks on any subsystems that might use malloc, and
non-AS-safe locks cannot be taken while the thread list lock is held,
imposing a requirement that it be taken last.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>convert malloc use under libc-internal locks to use internal allocator</title>
<updated>2020-11-11T18:31:50+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2020-11-11T18:08:42+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=34952fe5de44a833370cbe87b63fb8eec61466d7'/>
<id>34952fe5de44a833370cbe87b63fb8eec61466d7</id>
<content type='text'>
this change lifts undocumented restrictions on calls by replacement
mallocs to libc functions that might take these locks, and sets the
stage for lifting restrictions on the child execution environment
after multithreaded fork.

care is taken to #define macros to replace all four functions (malloc,
calloc, realloc, free) even if not all of them will be used, using an
undefined symbol name for the ones intended not to be used so that any
inadvertent future use will be caught at compile time rather than
directed to the wrong implementation.
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
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<pre>
this change lifts undocumented restrictions on calls by replacement
mallocs to libc functions that might take these locks, and sets the
stage for lifting restrictions on the child execution environment
after multithreaded fork.

care is taken to #define macros to replace all four functions (malloc,
calloc, realloc, free) even if not all of them will be used, using an
undefined symbol name for the ones intended not to be used so that any
inadvertent future use will be caught at compile time rather than
directed to the wrong implementation.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>fix sem_close unmapping of still-referenced semaphore</title>
<updated>2020-10-28T20:13:45+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2020-10-28T20:13:45+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=f70375df85d26235a45e74559afd69be59e5ff99'/>
<id>f70375df85d26235a45e74559afd69be59e5ff99</id>
<content type='text'>
sem_open is required to return the same sem_t pointer for all
references to the same named semaphore when it's opened more than once
in the same process. thus we keep a table of all the mapped semaphores
and their reference counts. the code path for sem_close checked the
reference count, but then proceeded to unmap the semaphore regardless
of whether the count had reached zero.

add an immediate unlock-and-return for the nonzero refcnt case so the
property of performing the munmap syscall after releasing the lock can
be preserved.
</content>
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<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
sem_open is required to return the same sem_t pointer for all
references to the same named semaphore when it's opened more than once
in the same process. thus we keep a table of all the mapped semaphores
and their reference counts. the code path for sem_close checked the
reference count, but then proceeded to unmap the semaphore regardless
of whether the count had reached zero.

add an immediate unlock-and-return for the nonzero refcnt case so the
property of performing the munmap syscall after releasing the lock can
be preserved.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>split internal lock API out of libc.h, creating lock.h</title>
<updated>2018-09-12T22:40:35+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2018-09-12T14:19:54+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=5f12ffe1239a5e4f8d4e98e2dff4e191a71f4693'/>
<id>5f12ffe1239a5e4f8d4e98e2dff4e191a71f4693</id>
<content type='text'>
this further reduces the number of source files which need to include
libc.h and thereby be potentially exposed to libc global state and
internals.

this will also facilitate further improvements like adding an inline
fast-path, if we want to do so later.
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<pre>
this further reduces the number of source files which need to include
libc.h and thereby be potentially exposed to libc global state and
internals.

this will also facilitate further improvements like adding an inline
fast-path, if we want to do so later.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>overhaul internally-public declarations using wrapper headers</title>
<updated>2018-09-12T18:34:33+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2018-09-11T03:26:40+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=13d1afa46f8098df290008c681816c9eb89ffbdb'/>
<id>13d1afa46f8098df290008c681816c9eb89ffbdb</id>
<content type='text'>
commits leading up to this one have moved the vast majority of
libc-internal interface declarations to appropriate internal headers,
allowing them to be type-checked and setting the stage to limit their
visibility. the ones that have not yet been moved are mostly
namespace-protected aliases for standard/public interfaces, which
exist to facilitate implementing plain C functions in terms of POSIX
functionality, or C or POSIX functionality in terms of extensions that
are not standardized. some don't quite fit this description, but are
"internally public" interfacs between subsystems of libc.

rather than create a number of newly-named headers to declare these
functions, and having to add explicit include directives for them to
every source file where they're needed, I have introduced a method of
wrapping the corresponding public headers.

parallel to the public headers in $(srcdir)/include, we now have
wrappers in $(srcdir)/src/include that come earlier in the include
path order. they include the public header they're wrapping, then add
declarations for namespace-protected versions of the same interfaces
and any "internally public" interfaces for the subsystem they
correspond to.

along these lines, the wrapper for features.h is now responsible for
the definition of the hidden, weak, and weak_alias macros. this means
source files will no longer need to include any special headers to
access these features.

over time, it is my expectation that the scope of what is "internally
public" will expand, reducing the number of source files which need to
include *_impl.h and related headers down to those which are actually
implementing the corresponding subsystems, not just using them.
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
commits leading up to this one have moved the vast majority of
libc-internal interface declarations to appropriate internal headers,
allowing them to be type-checked and setting the stage to limit their
visibility. the ones that have not yet been moved are mostly
namespace-protected aliases for standard/public interfaces, which
exist to facilitate implementing plain C functions in terms of POSIX
functionality, or C or POSIX functionality in terms of extensions that
are not standardized. some don't quite fit this description, but are
"internally public" interfacs between subsystems of libc.

rather than create a number of newly-named headers to declare these
functions, and having to add explicit include directives for them to
every source file where they're needed, I have introduced a method of
wrapping the corresponding public headers.

parallel to the public headers in $(srcdir)/include, we now have
wrappers in $(srcdir)/src/include that come earlier in the include
path order. they include the public header they're wrapping, then add
declarations for namespace-protected versions of the same interfaces
and any "internally public" interfaces for the subsystem they
correspond to.

along these lines, the wrapper for features.h is now responsible for
the definition of the hidden, weak, and weak_alias macros. this means
source files will no longer need to include any special headers to
access these features.

over time, it is my expectation that the scope of what is "internally
public" will expand, reducing the number of source files which need to
include *_impl.h and related headers down to those which are actually
implementing the corresponding subsystems, not just using them.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>revise the definition of multiple basic locks in the code</title>
<updated>2018-01-09T18:15:27+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Jens Gustedt</name>
<email>Jens.Gustedt@inria.fr</email>
</author>
<published>2018-01-03T13:17:12+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=32482f61da7650ff10741bd5aedd66bbc3ea165b'/>
<id>32482f61da7650ff10741bd5aedd66bbc3ea165b</id>
<content type='text'>
In all cases this is just a change from two volatile int to one.
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<pre>
In all cases this is just a change from two volatile int to one.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>fix mmap leak in sem_open failure path for link call</title>
<updated>2015-04-21T17:24:46+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2015-04-21T17:24:46+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=086793ad99dc625fd1c47f96fc31ea8aa316b438'/>
<id>086793ad99dc625fd1c47f96fc31ea8aa316b438</id>
<content type='text'>
the leak was found by static analysis (reported by Alexander Monakov),
not tested/observed, but seems to have occured both when failing due
to O_EXCL, and in a race condition with O_CREAT but not O_EXCL where a
semaphore by the same name was created concurrently.
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
the leak was found by static analysis (reported by Alexander Monakov),
not tested/observed, but seems to have occured both when failing due
to O_EXCL, and in a race condition with O_CREAT but not O_EXCL where a
semaphore by the same name was created concurrently.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>make all objects used with atomic operations volatile</title>
<updated>2015-03-04T03:50:02+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2015-03-04T03:50:02+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=56fbaa3bbe73f12af2bfbbcf2adb196e6f9fe264'/>
<id>56fbaa3bbe73f12af2bfbbcf2adb196e6f9fe264</id>
<content type='text'>
the memory model we use internally for atomics permits plain loads of
values which may be subject to concurrent modification without
requiring that a special load function be used. since a compiler is
free to make transformations that alter the number of loads or the way
in which loads are performed, the compiler is theoretically free to
break this usage. the most obvious concern is with atomic cas
constructs: something of the form tmp=*p;a_cas(p,tmp,f(tmp)); could be
transformed to a_cas(p,*p,f(*p)); where the latter is intended to show
multiple loads of *p whose resulting values might fail to be equal;
this would break the atomicity of the whole operation. but even more
fundamental breakage is possible.

with the changes being made now, objects that may be modified by
atomics are modeled as volatile, and the atomic operations performed
on them by other threads are modeled as asynchronous stores by
hardware which happens to be acting on the request of another thread.
such modeling of course does not itself address memory synchronization
between cores/cpus, but that aspect was already handled. this all
seems less than ideal, but it's the best we can do without mandating a
C11 compiler and using the C11 model for atomics.

in the case of pthread_once_t, the ABI type of the underlying object
is not volatile-qualified. so we are assuming that accessing the
object through a volatile-qualified lvalue via casts yields volatile
access semantics. the language of the C standard is somewhat unclear
on this matter, but this is an assumption the linux kernel also makes,
and seems to be the correct interpretation of the standard.
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
the memory model we use internally for atomics permits plain loads of
values which may be subject to concurrent modification without
requiring that a special load function be used. since a compiler is
free to make transformations that alter the number of loads or the way
in which loads are performed, the compiler is theoretically free to
break this usage. the most obvious concern is with atomic cas
constructs: something of the form tmp=*p;a_cas(p,tmp,f(tmp)); could be
transformed to a_cas(p,*p,f(*p)); where the latter is intended to show
multiple loads of *p whose resulting values might fail to be equal;
this would break the atomicity of the whole operation. but even more
fundamental breakage is possible.

with the changes being made now, objects that may be modified by
atomics are modeled as volatile, and the atomic operations performed
on them by other threads are modeled as asynchronous stores by
hardware which happens to be acting on the request of another thread.
such modeling of course does not itself address memory synchronization
between cores/cpus, but that aspect was already handled. this all
seems less than ideal, but it's the best we can do without mandating a
C11 compiler and using the C11 model for atomics.

in the case of pthread_once_t, the ABI type of the underlying object
is not volatile-qualified. so we are assuming that accessing the
object through a volatile-qualified lvalue via casts yields volatile
access semantics. the language of the C standard is somewhat unclear
on this matter, but this is an assumption the linux kernel also makes,
and seems to be the correct interpretation of the standard.
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>fix temp file leak in sem_open on successful creation of new semaphore</title>
<updated>2013-06-27T01:41:51+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2013-06-27T01:41:51+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=7c20a11801fd56cbadac5a6e88ddddf8656ac1bc'/>
<id>7c20a11801fd56cbadac5a6e88ddddf8656ac1bc</id>
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</content>
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<pre>
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>fix bug whereby sem_open leaked its own internal slots on failure</title>
<updated>2013-06-27T01:39:15+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Rich Felker</name>
<email>dalias@aerifal.cx</email>
</author>
<published>2013-06-27T01:39:15+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=a033cd22aa0ecd9f494b74669d358e7e1c7e1335'/>
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<pre>
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
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