From: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2022 20:15:51 +0000 (-0400)
Subject: Fix: futex wait: handle spurious futex wakeups
X-Git-Url: https://git.lttng.org./?a=commitdiff_plain;h=36962e16797b5ca590c54a385ca594e2859ef8c2;p=lttng-tools.git

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.cpp b/src/common/futex.cpp
index 21ab09ab7..e178b7e1b 100644
--- a/src/common/futex.cpp
+++ b/src/common/futex.cpp
@@ -72,16 +72,25 @@ 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");