Re: [musl] Potential deadlock in pthread_kill()

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 03:14:43PM -0700, Hydro Flask wrote:
> On 2020-07-06 15:00, Rich Felker wrote:
> >Yes, I see it clearly now. Sorry it took a while. I have prepared the
> >attached patch which I'll push soon if there are no problems.
> 
> Needs one more tiny tweak. I noticed that pthread_cancel() calls
> pthread_kill(). That means pthread_kill() must be async-cancel-safe.
> If an asynchronous cancellation happens after pthread_kill() grabs
> the killlock, then it will deadlock because the asynchronous
> pthread_exit(PTHREAD_CANCELED) call will then recursively try to
> grab killlock.
> 
> The solution as far as I can tell is to not just block app signals
> when grabbing killlock, but all signals.

Indeed. It'd also work to disable async cancellation for the duration
of the pthread_cancel call, but that's almost surely more work.

Are you in agreement that it suffices for only pthread_kill to block
all signals? (Still blocking just app signals everywhere else) The
scheduling functions could be changed too, but I'm hesitant to change
pthread_exit without thinking about it further since it has a lot more
subtleties. And I think only pthread_kill needs it since it's the only
one that needs to be AC-safe.

Rich