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Re: gdb, pthreads, and sleep


On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 04:47:06PM -0400, Michael Elizabeth Chastain wrote:
> The problem is an interaction between sleep, pthread_create, and gdb.
> When gdb is running, pthread_create eventually calls
> pthread_restart_new, which sends the pthread_sig_restart signal.  gdb
> notices this signal.  But as a side effect, the "sleep (9)" is
> interrupted and returns early.
> 
> When gdb is used, usually all the threads go all the way to exit, but
> sometimes some threads do not (especially the newest thread created).


> (2) Change the program under test to be more correct:
> 
>       int unslept = 9;
>       while (unslept)
> 	unslept = sleep (unslept);
> 
>     This is the proper way to call 'sleep' in a program that may
>     receive signals.  The return value of 'sleep' is documented in
>     Single Unix Spec, v2, so it is portable.  If this code leads to a
>     problem, then it means that the test program has found a bug in the
>     operating system's implementation of "sleep".  Tickling bugs is
>     a *good* thing for a test program.

Yes.

>     The gotcha here is that gdb should work with buggy test programs.
>     Currently, pthreads.c is written poorly (ignores the return value of
>     'sleep'), but it's natural that people write code like this.

See the archives (it's in a PR somewhere, and in gdb@ also) for more
information.  Kernel 2.6 will restart the syscall in this case.  Many
other interruptible syscalls will not be restarted but that's the best
we can do.

> Also, I think we need some documentation in the gdb threads section.
> gdb makes some threaded programs behave differently because the signals
> for gdb are not perfectly transparent.  Watch what happens when I run
> gdb.mi/pthreads with and without gdb:
> 
>   /* without gdb */
>   % ./pthreads
>   hello
>   hello
> 
>   /* with gdb */
>   (gdb) run
>   Starting program: /berman/home/mgnu/gdb/pthread-select/pthreads
>   [New Thread 8192 (LWP 12564)]
>   [New Thread 16385 (LWP 12568)]
>   [New Thread 8194 (LWP 12569)]
>   [New Thread 16387 (LWP 12570)]
>   hello thread
>   [New Thread 24580 (LWP 12571)]
>   hello thread
>   [New Thread 32773 (LWP 12572)]
>   hello thread
>   [New Thread 40966 (LWP 12573)]
>   hello thread
>   hello
>   hello
> 
>   Program exited normally.
> 
> The 'hello thread' output happens only under the debugger.
> I think people will be surprised when their 'sleep' calls actually
> sleep without gdb, but return with a lot of unslept time with gdb.
> I doubt we can fix this, although maybe the pthreads implementors
> can fix it.  But we can least document it.

Feel free to write up some documentation about this problem :)

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer


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