Fix: futex wait: handle spurious futex wakeups

Observed issue
==============

The futex futex_nto1_wait() implements a futex wait/wakeup scheme
identical to the liburcu workqueue code, which has an issue with
spurious wakeups.

A spurious wakeup on futex_nto1_wait can cause futex_nto1_wait to return
with a futex state of -1, which is unexpected.

futex_nto1_wait is used by the relayd live dispatcher thread, by the
relayd main dispatcher thread, as well as by the sessiond dispatcher
thread.

Given that following a futex_nto1_wait returning due to a spurious
wakeup futex_nto1_prepare will set the futex value to -1, things go
back to normal for the following futex_nto1_wait calls.

Therefore, the only impact of this issue is to spuriously use slightly
more CPU time than strictly required.

The effect is even shorter-lasting that in the liburcu counterparts
because futex_nto1_prepare explicitly sets the futex state to -1 rather
than use an atomic decrement, which immediately sets to state back to
a consistent state.

Cause
=====

From futex(5):

       FUTEX_WAIT
              Returns 0 if the caller was woken up.  Note that a  wake-up  can
              also  be caused by common futex usage patterns in unrelated code
              that happened to have previously used the  futex  word's  memory
              location  (e.g., typical futex-based implementations of Pthreads
              mutexes can cause this under some conditions).  Therefore, call‐
              ers should always conservatively assume that a return value of 0
              can mean a spurious wake-up, and  use  the  futex  word's  value
              (i.e.,  the user-space synchronization scheme) to decide whether
              to continue to block or not.

Solution
========

We therefore need to validate whether the value differs from -1 in
user-space after the call to FUTEX_WAIT returns 0.

Known drawbacks
===============

None.

Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Signed-off-by: Jérémie Galarneau <jeremie.galarneau@efficios.com>
Change-Id: I8a1b6aaf77b6a2f941fd4f89b61bed71cf17906b

diff --git a/src/common/futex.c b/src/common/futex.c
index 3fb0368751873093593fa87213f3e5ee75890d85..80bdb01fb6f9e834c2d27564562edc34ce51e8e4 100644 (file)
--- a/src/common/futex.c
+++ b/src/common/futex.c
@@ -75,16 +75,25 @@ void futex_nto1_wait(int32_t *futex)
 {
        cmm_smp_mb();
 
-       if (uatomic_read(futex) != -1)
-               goto end;
-       while (futex_async(futex, FUTEX_WAIT, -1, NULL, NULL, 0)) {
+       while (uatomic_read(futex) == -1) {
+               if (!futex_async(futex, FUTEX_WAIT, -1, NULL, NULL, 0)) {
+                       /*
+                        * Prior queued wakeups queued by unrelated code
+                        * using the same address can cause futex wait to
+                        * return 0 even through the futex value is still
+                        * -1 (spurious wakeups). Check the value again
+                        * in user-space to validate whether it really
+                        * differs from -1.
+                        */
+                       continue;
+               }
                switch (errno) {
-               case EWOULDBLOCK:
+               case EAGAIN:
                        /* Value already changed. */
                        goto end;
                case EINTR:
                        /* Retry if interrupted by signal. */
-                       break;  /* Get out of switch. */
+                       break;  /* Get out of switch. Check again. */
                default:
                        /* Unexpected error. */
                        PERROR("futex_async");