When one thread passes the buck to another thread, it uses
virCondSignal to wake up the target thread. The variable
'haveTheBuck' is not updated in a race-free manner when
this occurs. The current thread sets it to false, and the
woken up thread sets it to true. There is a window where
a 3rd thread can come in and grab the buck.
Even if this didn't lead to crashes & deadlocks, this would
still result in unfairness in the buckpassing algorithm.
A better solution is to *never* set haveTheBuck to false
when we're passing the buck. Only set it to false when there
is no further thread waiting for the buck.
* src/rpc/virnetclient.c: Only set haveTheBuck to false
if no thread is waiting
}
tmp = tmp->next;
}
+ client->haveTheBuck = false;
VIR_DEBUG("No thread to pass the buck to");
if (client->wantClose) {
}
/* Grr, someone passed the buck onto us ... */
+ } else {
+ client->haveTheBuck = true;
}
VIR_DEBUG("We have the buck %p %p", client->waitDispatch, thiscall);
- client->haveTheBuck = true;
/*
* The buck stops here!
virGetLastError())
rv = -1;
- client->haveTheBuck = false;
-
cleanup:
VIR_DEBUG("All done with our call %p %p %d", client->waitDispatch, thiscall, rv);
return rv;