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path: root/src/internal/libc.h
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2011-08-23security hardening: ensure suid programs have valid stdin/out/errRich Felker-2/+4
this behavior (opening fds 0-2 for a suid program) is explicitly allowed (but not required) by POSIX to protect badly-written suid programs from clobbering files they later open. this commit does add some cost in startup code, but the availability of auxv and the security flag will be useful elsewhere in the future. in particular auxv is needed for static-linked vdso support, which is still waiting to be committed (sorry nik!)
2011-08-12pthread and synccall cleanup, new __synccall_wait opRich Felker-0/+1
fix up clone signature to match the actual behavior. the new __syncall_wait function allows a __synccall callback to wait for other threads to continue without returning, so that it can resume action after the caller finishes. this interface could be made significantly more general/powerful with minimal effort, but i'll wait to do that until it's actually useful for something.
2011-08-06simplify multi-threaded errno, eliminate useless function pointerRich Felker-2/+1
2011-08-06use weak aliases rather than function pointers to simplify some codeRich Felker-2/+0
2011-07-30add proper fuxed-based locking for stdioRich Felker-1/+2
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.
2011-07-29new attempt at making set*id() safe and robustRich Felker-1/+2
changing credentials in a multi-threaded program is extremely difficult on linux because it requires synchronizing the change between all threads, which have their own thread-local credentials on the kernel side. this is further complicated by the fact that changing the real uid can fail due to exceeding RLIMIT_NPROC, making it possible that the syscall will succeed in some threads but fail in others. the old __rsyscall approach being replaced was robust in that it would report failure if any one thread failed, but in this case, the program would be left in an inconsistent state where individual threads might have different uid. (this was not as bad as glibc, which would sometimes even fail to report the failure entirely!) the new approach being committed refuses to change real user id when it cannot temporarily set the rlimit to infinity. this is completely POSIX conformant since POSIX does not require an implementation to allow real-user-id changes for non-privileged processes whatsoever. still, setting the real uid can fail due to memory allocation in the kernel, but this can only happen if there is not already a cached object for the target user. thus, we forcibly serialize the syscalls attempts, and fail the entire operation on the first failure. this *should* lead to an all-or-nothing success/failure result, but it's still fragile and highly dependent on kernel developers not breaking things worse than they're already broken. ideally linux will eventually add a CLONE_USERCRED flag that would give POSIX conformant credential changes without any hacks from userspace, and all of this code would become redundant and could be removed ~10 years down the line when everyone has abandoned the old broken kernels. i'm not holding my breath...
2011-04-20fix minor bugs due to incorrect threaded-predicate semanticsRich Felker-0/+1
some functions that should have been testing whether pthread_self() had been called and initialized the thread pointer were instead testing whether pthread_create() had been called and actually made the program "threaded". while it's unlikely any mismatch would occur in real-world problems, this could have introduced subtle bugs. now, we store the address of the main thread's thread descriptor in the libc structure and use its presence as a flag that the thread register is initialized. note that after fork, the calling thread (not necessarily the original main thread) is the new main thread.
2011-04-17clean up handling of thread/nothread mode, lockingRich Felker-4/+3
2011-04-17optimize cancellation enable/disable codeRich Felker-0/+1
the goal is to be able to use pthread_setcancelstate internally in the implementation, whenever a function might want to use functions which are cancellation points but avoid becoming a cancellation point itself. i could have just used a separate internal function for temporarily inhibiting cancellation, but the solution in this commit is better because (1) it's one less implementation-specific detail in functions that need to use it, and (2) application code can also get the same benefit. previously, pthread_setcancelstate dependend on pthread_self, which would pull in unwanted thread setup overhead for non-threaded programs. now, it temporarily stores the state in the global libc struct if threads have not been initialized, and later moves it if needed. this way we can instead use __pthread_self, which has no dependencies and assumes that the thread register is already valid.
2011-04-17overhaul pthread cancellationRich Felker-7/+1
this patch improves the correctness, simplicity, and size of cancellation-related code. modulo any small errors, it should now be completely conformant, safe, and resource-leak free. the notion of entering and exiting cancellation-point context has been completely eliminated and replaced with alternative syscall assembly code for cancellable syscalls. the assembly is responsible for setting up execution context information (stack pointer and address of the syscall instruction) which the cancellation signal handler can use to determine whether the interrupted code was in a cancellable state. these changes eliminate race conditions in the previous generation of cancellation handling code (whereby a cancellation request received just prior to the syscall would not be processed, leaving the syscall to block, potentially indefinitely), and remedy an issue where non-cancellable syscalls made from signal handlers became cancellable if the signal handler interrupted a cancellation point. x86_64 asm is untested and may need a second try to get it right.
2011-04-06move rsyscall out of pthread_create moduleRich Felker-1/+2
this is something of a tradeoff, as now set*id() functions, rather than pthread_create, are what pull in the code overhead for dealing with linux's refusal to implement proper POSIX thread-vs-process semantics. my motivations are: 1. it's cleaner this way, especially cleaner to optimize out the rsyscall locking overhead from pthread_create when it's not needed. 2. it's expected that only a tiny number of core system programs will ever use set*id() functions, whereas many programs may want to use threads, and making thread overhead tiny is an incentive for "light" programs to try threads.
2011-04-05new framework to inhibit thread cancellation when neededRich Felker-0/+2
with these small changes, libc functions which need to call functions which are cancellation points, but which themselves must not be cancellation points, can use the CANCELPT_INHIBIT and CANCELPT_RESUME macros to temporarily inhibit all cancellation.
2011-04-03simplify calling of timer signal handlerRich Felker-2/+1
2011-04-03simplify pthread tsd key handlingRich Felker-2/+1
2011-04-01reorganize the __libc structure for threaded performance issuesRich Felker-6/+6
we want to keep atomically updated fields (locks and thread count) and really anything writable far away from frequently-needed function pointers. stuff some rarely-needed function pointers in between to pad, hopefully up to a cache line boundary.
2011-03-29major improvements to cancellation handlingRich Felker-0/+1
- there is no longer any risk of spoofing cancellation requests, since the cancel flag is set in pthread_cancel rather than in the signal handler. - cancellation signal is no longer unblocked when running the cancellation handlers. instead, pthread_create will cause any new threads created from a cancellation handler to unblock their own cancellation signal. - various tweaks in preparation for POSIX timer support.
2011-03-24overhaul cancellation to fix resource leaks and dangerous behavior with signalsRich Felker-1/+2
this commit addresses two issues: 1. a race condition, whereby a cancellation request occurring after a syscall returned from kernelspace but before the subsequent CANCELPT_END would cause cancellable resource-allocating syscalls (like open) to leak resources. 2. signal handlers invoked while the thread was blocked at a cancellation point behaved as if asynchronous cancellation mode wer in effect, resulting in potentially dangerous state corruption if a cancellation request occurs. the glibc/nptl implementation of threads shares both of these issues. with this commit, both are fixed. however, cancellation points encountered in a signal handler will not be acted upon if the signal was received while the thread was already at a cancellation point. they will of course be acted upon after the signal handler returns, so in real-world usage where signal handlers quickly return, it should not be a problem. it's possible to solve this problem too by having sigaction() wrap all signal handlers with a function that uses a pthread_cleanup handler to catch cancellation, patch up the saved context, and return into the cancellable function that will catch and act upon the cancellation. however that would be a lot of complexity for minimal if any benefit...
2011-03-12implement flockfile api, rework stdio lockingRich Felker-0/+4
2011-02-24various changes in preparation for dynamic linking supportRich Felker-4/+12
prefer using visibility=hidden for __libc internal data, rather than an accessor function, if the compiler has visibility. optimize with -O3 for PIC targets (shared library). without heavy inlining, reloading the GOT register in small functions kills performance. 20-30% size increase for a single libc.so is not a big deal, compared to comparaible size increase in every static binaries. use -Bsymbolic-functions, not -Bsymbolic. global variables are subject to COPY relocations, and thus binding their addresses in the library at link time will cause library functions to read the wrong (original) copies instead of the copies made in the main program's bss section. add entry point, _start, for dynamic linker.
2011-02-20use an accessor function for __libc data pointer when compiled as PICRich Felker-3/+10
prior to this change, a large portion of libc was unusable prior to relocation by the dynamic linker, due to dependence on the global data in the __libc structure and the need to obtain its address through the GOT. with this patch, the accessor function __libc_loc is now able to obtain the address of __libc via PC-relative addressing without using the GOT. this means the majority of libc functionality is now accessible right away. naturally, the above statements all depend on having an architecture where PC-relative addressing and jumps/calls are feasible, and a compiler that generates the appropriate code.
2011-02-18add pthread_atfork interfaceRich Felker-0/+1
note that this presently does not handle consistency of the libc's own global state during forking. as per POSIX 2008, if the parent process was threaded, the child process may only call async-signal-safe functions until one of the exec-family functions is called, so the current behavior is believed to be conformant even if non-ideal. it may be improved at some later time.
2011-02-12initial check-in, version 0.5.0v0.5.0Rich Felker-0/+43