on 30/03/2013 18:14 John-Mark Gurney said the following: > As someone else pointed out in this thread, if a userland program > depends upon this behavior, it has a race condition in it... > > Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3 > enters routine to read > enters routine to close > calls close(3) > open() returns 3 > does read(3) for orignal fd > > How can the original threaded program ensure that thread 2 doesn't > create a new fd in between? So even if you use a lock, this won't > help, because as far as I know, there is no enter read and unlock > mutex call yet... > > I decided long ago that this is only solvable by proper use of locking > and ensuring that if you call close (the syscall), that you do not have > any other thread that may use the fd. It's the close routine's (not > syscall) function to make sure it locks out other threads and all other > are out of the code path that will use the fd before it calls close.. > > If someone could describe how this new eject a person from read could > be done in a race safe way, then I'd say go ahead w/ it... Otherwise > we're just moving the race around, and letting people think that they > have solved the problem when they haven't... > > I think I remeber another thread about this from a year or two ago, > but I couldn't find it... If someone finds it, posting a link would > be nice.. >
I wish to abstract as much as possible from how an application may use, misuse or even abuse the close+xxxx interaction. But I think that the behavior that provides more information / capabilities is preferable over the behavior that does not. E.g. your example above does not apply to a utility that has only two threads. The "three threads" problem can also be solved if all the threads cooperate. But as I've said. -- Andriy Gapon _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
