This is the mail archive of the libc-help@sourceware.org mailing list for the glibc project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

[RFC]setlocale() race condition


Hi

This problem was noticed with glibc shipped with distro, older version of glibc 2.5-12, the problem is noticed after 8 hours of testing and application crashed with SIGSEGV. My efforts to replicate the problem with main line glibc was not successful, but I still feel the problem is there even with main line glibc and wished to know your thoughts on this issue
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Explanation:
This problem was noticed during PHP engine development, current implementation calls setlocale() every time a page is requested. The problem is noticed during stress test of this enging
setlocale() is being called on multiple threads. The exact api calls are as follows
....
setlocale(LC_ALL,'C');
....
setlocale(LC_TYPE,'');
....
setlocale(LC_CTYPE,'C');
....
It was observed that after ~8 hours of testing, application crashed at strcmp() call made from setlocale(), when I analyzed the dump it showed that _nl_global_locale.__names[category] pointer was corrupted.
When I went through the code, I see a window of race condition where one thread will call strcmp()(with in setlocale()) with current value of _nl_global_locale.__names[category] passed as argument, while another thread goes ahead and frees the string pointer pointed by _nl_global_locale.__names[category].


Since the man page of setlocale() doesn't talk any thing about the call `not being re-entrant` I assume setlocale() to be re-entrant
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Testing:
Didn't notice any regression with testing. Testing was done under x86-64 box where the application was built as 32bit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fix:
Similar fix, fixed the problem with distro glibc, where __libc_lock_lock() is used instead of __libc_rwlock_rdlock()



Thanks Yeehaw

Index: libc/locale/setlocale.c
===================================================================
--- libc.orig/locale/setlocale.c	2008-03-31 06:07:03.000000000 +0530
+++ libc/locale/setlocale.c	2008-06-12 08:59:45.000000000 +0530
@@ -234,10 +234,14 @@
   if (locale == NULL)
     return (char *) _nl_global_locale.__names[category];
 
+  __libc_rwlock_rdlock (__libc_setlocale_lock);
   if (strcmp (locale, _nl_global_locale.__names[category]) == 0)
+	{
+      __libc_rwlock_unlock (__libc_setlocale_lock);
     /* Changing to the same thing.  */
     return (char *) _nl_global_locale.__names[category];
-
+	}
+      __libc_rwlock_unlock (__libc_setlocale_lock);
   /* We perhaps really have to load some data.  So we determine the
      path in which to look for the data now.  The environment variable
      `LOCPATH' must only be used when the binary has no SUID or SGID

Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]