> The trace I just captured looks like this:
>
> 08:12:54.424327 clone(child_stack=0,
> flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD,
> child_tidptr=0x7fdf2ad8e9f0) = 15397
> 08:12:54.424394 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424432 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424463 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424486 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424510 rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {0x43c990, [], SA_RESTORER,
> 0x301f833140}, {SIG_DFL, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x301f833140}, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424541 wait4(-1, [{WIFEXITED(s) && WEXITSTATUS(s) == 0}],
> 0, NULL) = 15397
> 08:12:54.424668 --- SIGINT (Interrupt) @ 0 (0) ---
> 08:12:54.424680 rt_sigreturn(0x2) = 15397
> 08:12:54.424702 rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {SIG_DFL, [], SA_RESTORER,
> 0x301f833140}, {0x43c990, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x301f833140}, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424739 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424761 --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
> 08:12:54.424772 wait4(-1, 0x7fff0a9956dc, WNOHANG, NULL) = -1 ECHILD
> (No child processes)
> 08:12:54.424793 rt_sigreturn(0xffffffffffffffff) = 0
> 08:12:54.424824 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424850 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
> 08:12:54.424881 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [INT CHLD], [], 8) = 0
>
> and I think one reason why the race is hard to get rid of is simply
> that system call return is _the_ common point of signal handling in
> UNIX (technically, obviously any return to user space, but there are
> no appreciable interrupts etc going on, and there _are_ a lot of
> system calls). The above trace is one that my patch would have handled
> correctly (it has no EINTR).
The one thing that jumps out at me here is the number of signal-handling
system calls. wait_sigint_handler gets installed and removed as the
SIGINT handler a lot. I wonder if we would see an improvement if I
used a global SIGINT handler that understood what to do with
wait_sigint_received. That's a change for down the road.
> And there aren't a lot of different system calls in the tight loop
> here: that's literally the whole loop of the "while : ; do /bin/true;
> done" thing. So most of the time, SIGINT will happen at _one_ of those
> system calls, and so even if you set that "waiting_for_child" flag
> right around the call to "wait4()", the race is actually much easier
> to hit than you'd think from "it's just a few CPU instructions".
>
> So the above trace is one that my patch would have handled correctly
> (since it has no EINTR). Maybe a combination of the two approaches
> would work even better?
I think we're eventually going to converge on a hybrid solution.
Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU c...@case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
