Re: Explaining cond var destroy [Re: [musl] C threads, v3.0]

[Jens Gustedt <jens.gustedt@inria.fr>]

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Am Donnerstag, den 07.08.2014, 12:13 -0400 schrieb Rich Felker:
> On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 09:50:51AM +0200, Jens Gustedt wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch, den 06.08.2014, 19:15 -0400 schrieb Rich Felker:
> > > The free operation in thread A is valid since A knows it is the last
> > > user of the mutex and thread B's use/ownership of the mutex formally
> > > ends with the atomic unlock.
> > 
> > No, operating on an object that has been freed is UB.  This is
> 
> No operation is performed on an object which has been freed.

ok, let me rephrase

passing an invalid userspace address to the kernel for a futex
operation is UB

> The futex
> wake is performed on the _address_, not the object, requesting that
> the kernel use the address as a key into a hash table and wake any
> threads which are blocked waiting on the futex object associated with
> that address. The address is never dereferenced. This is the whole
> point of the current design.

Yes this is the whole point. But it will not work if you use a invalid
address for that. The kernel is doing address translation (in case of
a shared futex operation) and for that alone you are supposed to pass
in a valid address, I think.

And generally for the design of the futex operations some are even
designed to compare the actual value to "val" or "val3". I don't think
that the kernel guys would give you any guarantee that the kernel
would not touch your object, for any of the operations.

> > independent of this object being a mutex or not. This must never
> > happen. So the free is making a wrong assumption.
> 
> You should clarify whether you mean internal UB in the implementation,
> or UB in the application. My understanding is that you meant in the
> implementation, but I claim that's wrong.

yes I mean implementation, and I am still convinced of it.

> > I think the fundamental flaw with this approach is that it mixes two
> > different concepts, the waiters count and a reference count. These are
> > two different things.
> 
> No, the waiters count is not used as a reference count. Only the state
> of the atomic int is used as a reference; once it's set to zero the
> implementation can no longer access the object (since another thread
> in the application is free to lock, unlock, destroy, and free it).

the application cannot directly, but pending application calls into
the library can, as we have seen.

Jens
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