[Gc] Re: Problem pthread_atfork

[Andy Wingo]

Hi Manuel,

On Mon 26 Mar 2012 09:33, Manuel.Serrano at inria.fr writes:

> It's not clear to me what would the consequences of disable the 
> pthread_atfork support. Could you enlighten me? Do you think that it could
> be a possible option to disable this support while we have not understood
> how this problem should be fixed?

Here is a micro-summary of the situation.

If you fork(2) a multithreaded program, the child may only call
async-signal-safe functions before you exec(3), according to POSIX.

However on some systems, you might be able to get by with registering a
pthread_atfork(3) handler that protects your data structures around the
fork.  Libgc has had code to do this for a long time.  (Libgc also has
to update its list of threads in the child, as the other threads go away
after the fork.)

However, libgc's pthread_atfork code was not enabled by default.  I
posted a patch to enable it.  That was recent, and hence your error.

I looked at your message and the blog and it doesn't seem clear to me
what the fix is.  Turning off HANDLE_FORK is certainly an option.

Actually reverting my patch might be the best option.  Since that mail I
decided to follow POSIX, as most libc, etc people don't care about bugs
involving threads and fork.  That's just my situation though.  Perhaps
Ivan or Hans has a better general perspective.

Regards,

Andy
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