From: Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Cc: Philipp Stephani <phst@google.com>,
Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: scratch/sigchld-fd 8f0ce42 1/2: Fix deadlock when receiving SIGCHLD during 'pselect'.
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2021 19:21:39 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAArVCkRg-mamb1YVgzQDYMRsR-CP=cD3OzGsLL3PzWykhi8Yog@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <834kjd7yk5.fsf@gnu.org>
Am Di., 19. Jan. 2021 um 16:09 Uhr schrieb Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
>
> > Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2021 13:49:49 -0500 (EST)
> > From: p.stephani2@gmail.com (Philipp Stephani)
> >
> > branch: scratch/sigchld-fd
> > commit 8f0ce42d3eb9b212424a4a25a376287ffc94a73e
> > Author: Philipp Stephani <phst@google.com>
> > Commit: Philipp Stephani <phst@google.com>
> >
> > Fix deadlock when receiving SIGCHLD during 'pselect'.
> >
> > If we receive and handle a SIGCHLD signal for a process while waiting
> > for that process, 'pselect' might never return. Instead, we have to
> > explicitly 'pselect' that the process status has changed. We do this
> > by writing to a pipe in the SIGCHLD handler and having
> > 'wait_reading_process_output' select on it.
> >
> > * src/process.c (child_signal_init): New helper function to create a
> > pipe for SIGCHLD notifications.
> > (child_signal_read, child_signal_notify): New helper functions to
> > read from/write to the child signal pipe.
> > (create_process): Initialize the child signal pipe on first use.
> > (handle_child_signal): Notify waiters that a process status has
> > changed.
> > (wait_reading_process_output): Make sure that we also catch
> > SIGCHLD/process status changes.
> >
> > * test/src/process-tests.el
> > (process-tests/fd-setsize-no-crash/make-process): Remove workaround,
> > which is no longer needed.
>
> Philipp, can you please elaborate about this changeset (which was in
> the meantime merged with master)? The comments you added mention some
> kind of deadlock, but don't describe what kind and in which situations
> it could happen, and without that it's hard to understand what
> problem(s) it tries to solve.
I had hoped that the fixed unit test and the commit description would
be clear enough. The issue appears to be that accept-process-output
frequently hangs (doesn't return) even though the process has already
finished. That's what process-tests/fd-setsize-no-crash/make-process
relies on. After some printf debugging, I concluded that
wait_reading_process_output wouldn't be notified about the process
status change in any way, and thus hang forever. A form like (sit-for
0.1) would trigger the process status change to be processed.
>
> In general, pselect is supposed to return with EINTR when SIGCHLD
> happoens while we are inside the call to pselect, and EINTR seems to
> be already handled by wait_reading_process_output. So I wonder why we
> need that additional "self-pipe" to be watched by pselect.
Yes, I'm wondering about that as well, but it's definitely the
behavior I see. Before commiting to master, I ran the test
process-tests/fd-setsize-no-crash/make-process multiple times with and
without the commit, and the outcome was clear: without the commit
accept-process-output would frequently hang, with the commit it never
hangs.
This is pure speculation, but I could imagine multiple things going on:
- Maybe there's no guarantee that pselect actually returns EINTR on SIGCHLD.
- Maybe EINTR is returned too early, before the signal handler got the
chance to update the process status.
>
> In addition, AFAIU this pipe should not be needed on MS-Windows, where
> the pselect emulation waits on the sub-process handles together with
> the other file descriptors, and so gets awakened when a process exits
> or dies. But again, without knowing the exact situations against
> which this changeset tries to protect, it is hard to make a decision.
>
It's definitely not needed on Windows, which has a superior mechanism
anyway (process handles are waitable objects in Windows). I opted to
create the additional pipe on Windows as well - the costs should be
small, and it keeps the code more consistent between the operating
systems.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-01-19 18:21 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 23+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <20210116184947.2105.45267@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
[not found] ` <20210116184949.3C17C211A5@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
2021-01-19 15:10 ` scratch/sigchld-fd 8f0ce42 1/2: Fix deadlock when receiving SIGCHLD during 'pselect' Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-19 18:21 ` Philipp Stephani [this message]
2021-01-19 19:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-19 20:22 ` Philipp Stephani
2021-01-20 15:05 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-23 17:36 ` Philipp Stephani
2021-01-23 18:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-23 18:30 ` Philipp Stephani
2021-01-19 20:46 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-19 20:58 ` Philipp Stephani
2021-01-20 18:07 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 3:37 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 8:37 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 8:52 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 9:18 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 10:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 10:17 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 15:30 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 15:48 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 16:40 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 16:44 ` Andreas Schwab
2021-01-20 17:03 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-01-20 17:30 ` Andreas Schwab
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