I'm curious if I am able to do the following with the unistd c function alarm(int signal)
Having my main.... and for each thread hat is created to initializate a SIGALRM with the function, which should close my thread in case of activating. Is this possible? or 1 SIGALRM / main is legal only?
Each thread in a process has an independent signal mask, which
indicates the set of signals that the thread is currently blocking. A
thread can manipulate its signal mask using pthread_sigmask(3). In a
traditional single-threaded application, sigprocmask(2) can be used to
manipulate the signal mask.
from man 7 signal.
The problem is that alarm works per process, not per thread, so if the sigmask of the threads is the same, you can't really know which one will receive the signal.
OK, so first, the alarm() is actually taking an unsigned int value which is the number of seconds before it expires. So your example int signal isn't the correct implementation of alarm(), just FYI.
As far as this goes:
for each thread that is created to initialization a SIGALRM
The SIGALRM that is generated is done so for the process not per thread, so you will have to catch the alarm and have some internal strategy to know which thread you raised it for and handle that accordingly. Once you have your handler, you can raise the alarm over and over again, however keep in mind:
Alarm requests are not stacked;
So you'll have to do this one at a time. It's still possible, but not totally stright forward as you were hoping.
For very rough example of what I'm talking about:
you have a "manager" which keeps track of requests
thread 1 tells the manager it needs to handle something in 10s
the manager "records" this and calls set alarm(10)
thread 2 tells the manager it needs to be woken up in 3 seconds
the manager calls alarm(0) to kill the alarm, calls alarm(3) then notes that once that goes off it needs to call alarm(7) to finish thread 1's sleep time
in your alarm handler you just call the manager and let it know an alarm went off and it will wake the appropriate thread (2) then reset the alarm for the next one.
Related
I'm trying code multi threaded worker and job giver program
Job giver thread pushes jobs to array with random delayed data it can be processed 1 second later or 10000... second later all depends to job giver.
Worker thread nanosleep()s till get shortest delayed job, then process it and remove it from job array.
All works fine except if job giver pushes shorter delayed job to array and worker thread still nanosleep()s to old shortest job, so its get delayed more than expected.
For now as quick fix I made signal handler with signal() that handling SIGUSR1 signal.
When job giver pushes new shortest it sends SIGUSR1 to whole program and cancels worker's nanosleep().
But I don't think it's best way to do it since it sends to whole program and I just want to cancel one thread's nanosleep().
So in summary how I can cancel other thread's nanosleep() from main thread without touching signals?
Note; I'm using pthread on linux with C language.
Note; Delays are in nanoseconds. With current setup I'm able to hit 50µs loss.
You can possibly use pthread_kill() to deliver the SIGUSR1 to a single thread
From the manpage:
The pthread_kill() function sends the signal sig to thread, a thread in the same process as the caller. The signal is asynchronously directed to thread.
If sig is 0, then no signal is sent, but error checking is still performed.
This should only have an effect to the single thread you target.
You have a big XY problem here. Sleeping and signals are not the way to implement coordination between threads. I'd go so far as to say that sleeping in a multithreaded program is almost always indicative of some sort of bug.
The tool for what you are trying to do is Condition Variables. If you're not familiar with them, I'd highly recommend the Condition Variables part of this tutorial. Instead of sleeping, your workers should be doing a timed wait on the condition variable, called in a loop, and exiting from the loop when the condition they're waiting for is true.
Lets say we have two mutexes one is called x other one is y
x is used for general locking like don't try access in same time with multiple threads. pthread_mutex_lock and pthread_mutex_unlock
y is used for nanosleep. pthread_cond_wait, pthread_cond_timedwait and pthread_cond_signal
For suspend I use cond_wait y then resume with cond_signal y. If I need suspend for some time like nanosleep I use cond_timedwait y and resume it with same way cond_signal y.
Source:
stackoverflow.com/questions/59286893/canceling-nanosleep-from-another-thread#comment104779089_59286893
There are linux kernel threads that do some work every now and then, then either go to sleep or block on a semaphore. They can be in this state for several seconds - quite a long time for a thread.
If threads need to be stopped for some reason, at least if unloading the driver they belong to, I am looking for a way to get them out of sleep or out of the semaphore without waiting the whole sleep time or triggering the semaphore as often as required.
I found and read a lot about this but there are multiple advises and I am still not sure how things work. So if you could shed some light on that.
msleep_interruptible
What is able to interrupt that?
down_interruptible
This semaphore function implies interrupt-ability. Same here, what can interrupt this semaphore?
kthread_stop
It's described as sets kthread_should_stop to true and wakes it... but this function blocks until the sleep time is over (even if using msleep_interruptible) or the semaphore is triggered.
What am I understanding wrong?
Use a signal to unblock - really?
My search found a signal can interrupt the thread. Other hits say a signal is not the best way to operate on threads.
If a signal is the best choice - which signal do I use to unblock the thread but not mess it up too much?
SIGINT is a termination signal - I don't intend to terminate something, just make it go on.
More information
The threads run a loop that checks a termination flag, does some work and then block in a sleep or a semaphore. They are used for
Situation 1.
A producer-consumer scenario that uses semaphores to synchronize producer and consumer. They work perfectly to make threads wait for work and start running on setting the semaphore.
Currently I'm setting a termination flag, then setting the semaphore up. This unblocks the thread which then checks the flag and terminates. This isn't my major problem. Hovever of course I'd like to know about a better way.
Code sample
while (keep_running) {
do_your_work();
down_interruptible(&mysemaphore); // Intention: break out of this
}
Situation 2.
A thread that periodically logs things. This thread sleeps some seconds between doing it's work. After setting the flag this thread terminates at it's next run but this can take several seconds. I want to break the sleep if necessary.
Code sample
while (keep_running) {
do_your_work();
msleep(15000); // Intention: break out of this - msleep_interruptible?
}
This request is about PThreads and using conditions or signals to pause/resume a continuous cycle worker thread.
A while ago, I came into this:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/23945651/6421961
Basically, user johnnycrash uses sigwait() to get a thread into a pause state (waiting for external wakening) and pthread_kill(thread_id, USR1) to signal the thread into waking up. He claims it to be faster than using the mutex+condition construct and it appears to be less complex. I am developing a piece of software that would indeed require a thread to sleep until signaled and return to sleep after doing work in an infinite cycle (the eater of a feeder-eater paradigm).
I am using this to have a separate thread waiting for the conclusion of worker threads. In my current implementation, worker threads add their handles to a list protected by a mutex, signal the waiting thread with pthread_kill and finish with pthread_join.
My questions are all related:
How valid is it to actually use pthread_kill()+sigwait() instead of mutex+condition?
In case it is an acceptable solution, what pitfalls/race conditions
should one be aware of?
Would it be better to use pthread_sigqueue() instead of pthread_kill()? Would it actually be able catch signals sent while sigwait() is not running and immediately process them as soon as sigwait() is called?
Last question, derived from some contradicting information I found: Will different threads both paused with sigwait() expecting USR1 be able to be signaled independently, or will only one of them be able to actually catch the signal regardless of which one was signaled?
I will try to answer points 1 and 4.
pthread_kill() + sigqueue() and mutex+condition they both have their own purposes. When you're working with data (i.e. global variable) which is used by multiple threads in that case mutex are more appropriate. But, when you're waiting for an external event (like. network packet) and want to signal your thread based on that event pthread_kill() is more appropriate.
It depends how the signal (USR1) was sent. If it was sent using pthread_kill() or pthread_sigqueue() you can specify which thread you're sending that signal to, the only difference is with pthread_sigqueue() - you can send an additional information with the signal. You can also send signal to specific pid or group-wise signal sending using kill(). So, it largely depends on your need.
With alarm function, I want to implement UDP retransmission. Is this function thread safe? Will it work under multi-threaded environment.
Calling alarm() in a thread will not reset pending signals, so you probably don't want to call it in a thread. You'd only want to call it within the parent no matter what language you are using if the underlying functionality is pthreads.
You'd probably be better off making provisions in a structure shared with the threads to re-send data as needed, or poke all (or some) running threads to resend upon servicing the signal in the parent.
I can't think of an implementation where calling it within a thread would be a good idea, so no - I wouldn't use it that way.
alarm() function is not thread safe.
Because it is process level. You can't control which thread should receive the signal once timer triggers. So at the time of signal arrival, another thread may be running. Sometimes it may crash you program with SIG_SEGV.
According to the docs alarm is "process-level" and only the last call is active... it uses the SIGNAL model and sends an async SIGALARAM to the process... whether the called signal handler is threadsafe depends on your implementation...
Without keeping a list of current threads, I'm trying to see that a realtime signal gets delivered to all threads in my process. My idea is to go about it like this:
Initially the signal handler is installed and the signal is unblocked in all threads.
When one thread wants to send the 'broadcast' signal, it acquires a mutex and sets a global flag that the broadcast is taking place.
The sender blocks the signal (using pthread_sigmask) for itself, and enters a loop repeatedly calling raise(sig) until sigpending indicates that the signal is pending (there were no threads remaining with the signal blocked).
As threads receive the signal, they act on it but wait in the signal handler for the broadcast flag to be cleared, so that the signal will remain masked.
The sender finishes the loop by unblocking the signal (in order to get its own delivery).
When the sender handles its own signal, it clears the global flag so that all the other threads can continue with their business.
The problem I'm running into is that pthread_sigmask is not being respected. Everything works right if I run the test program under strace (presumably due to different scheduling timing), but as soon as I run it alone, the sender receives its own signal (despite having blocked it..?) and none of the other threads ever get scheduled.
Any ideas what might be wrong? I've tried using sigqueue instead of raise, probing the signal mask, adding sleep all over the place to make sure the threads are patiently waiting for their signals, etc. and now I'm at a loss.
Edit: Thanks to psmears' answer, I think I understand the problem. Here's a potential solution. Feedback would be great:
At any given time, I can know the number of threads running, and I can prevent all thread creation and exiting during the broadcast signal if I need to.
The thread that wants to do the broadcast signal acquires a lock (so no other thread can do it at the same time), then blocks the signal for itself, and sends num_threads signals to the process, then unblocks the signal for itself.
The signal handler atomically increments a counter, and each instance of the signal handler waits until that counter is equal to num_threads to return.
The thread that did the broadcast also waits for the counter to reach num_threads, then it releases the lock.
One possible concern is that the signals will not get queued if the kernel is out of memory (Linux seems to have that issue). Do you know if sigqueue reliably informs the caller when it's unable to queue the signal (in which case I would loop until it succeeds), or could signals possibly be silently lost?
Edit 2: It seems to be working now. According to the documentation for sigqueue, it returns EAGAIN if it fails to queue the signal. But for robustness, I decided to just keep calling sigqueue until num_threads-1 signal handlers are running, interleaving calls to sched_yield after I've sent num_threads-1 signals.
There was a race condition at thread creation time, counting new threads, but I solved it with a strange (ab)use of read-write locks. Thread creation is "reading" and the broadcast signal is "writing", so unless there's a thread trying to broadcast, it doesn't create any contention at thread-creation.
raise() sends the signal to the current thread (only), so other threads won't receive it. I suspect that the fact that strace makes things work is a bug in strace (due to the way it works it ends up intercepting all signals sent to the process and re-raising them, so it may be re-raising them in the wrong way...).
You can probably get round that using kill(getpid(), <signal>) to send the signal to the current process as a whole.
However, another potential issue you might see is that sigpending() can indicate that the signal is pending on the process before all threads have received it - all that means is that there is at least one such signal pending for the process, and no CPU has yet become available to run a thread to deliver it...
Can you describe more details of what you're aiming to achieve? And how portable you want it to be? There's almost certainly a better way of doing it (signals are almost always a major headache, especially when mixed with threads...)
In multithreaded program raise(sig) is equivalent to pthread_kill(pthread_self(), sig).
Try kill(getpid(), sig)
Given that you can apparently lock thread creation and destruction, could you not just have the "broadcasting" thread post the required updates to thread-local-state in a per-thread queue, which each thread checks whenever it goes to use the thread-local-state? If there's outstanding update(s), it first applies them.
You are trying to synchronize a set of threads.
From a design pattern point of view the pthread native solution for your problem would be a pthread barrier.