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Date:      Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:54:34 +0100
From:      Anton Berezin <tobez@tobez.org>
To:        "Dustin J. Mitchell" <dustin@zmanda.com>
Cc:        freebsd-perl@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Unthreaded Perl linked to threaded libraries
Message-ID:  <20100310085434.GA42555@heechee.tobez.org>
In-Reply-To: <42338fbf1003091632j1fb96efdrfa0f00d2edf0a9d1@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <42338fbf1003091632j1fb96efdrfa0f00d2edf0a9d1@mail.gmail.com>

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On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 06:32:38PM -0600, Dustin J. Mitchell wrote:
> I'm running into a problem with Amanda (http://amanda.org) on FreeBSD,
> and looking for some guidance.  Before anyone sends me to
> amanda-users: I'm one of the Amanda developers, so the guidance I need
> is related to FreeBSD and its threading.
> 
> Amanda is currently being rewritten from C into Perl, with the
> interface handled by SWIG.  The Perl code is all single-threaded, but
> the underlying C code uses threads internally, via glib's libgthread.
> Basically, Perl runs in the main thread and calls the shots, while the
> C code gets the job done in threads.
> 
> The idea is that, because no part of Perl's state is ever accessed in
> a thread but the main thread, this won't pose a problem.
> 
> What I'm seeing on FreeBSD 7.0 is that programs with threads but no
> perl work fine, and perl programs that call into C libraries work
> fine, but perl programs that call C libraries that start a thread hang
> in the g_thread_create call.  A truss looks like this:
> 
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  _umtx_op(0xffffd6dc,0x3,0x1,0,0)
>  4886 perl5.8.9 RET   _umtx_op 0
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK,0xffffd670,0x2832a0d8)
>  4886 perl5.8.9 RET   sigprocmask 0
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK,0x2832a0d8,0)
>  4886 perl5.8.9 RET   sigprocmask 0
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK,0xffffd5c0,0x2832a0d8)
>  4886 perl5.8.9 RET   sigprocmask 0
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK,0x2832a0d8,0)
>  4886 perl5.8.9 RET   sigprocmask 0
>  4886 perl5.8.9 CALL  _umtx_op(0x2877bce0,0x11,0,0,0)
> 
> that CALL never returns.
> 
> I'm not really sure where to start figuring this out.  The best I can
> think of is to read the source for the _umtx_op syscall.  Does anyone
> have any better pointers?

Can you try and rebuild perl so that it is still not threaded but linked
with -pthread and friends?  This would involve copying REINPLACE_CMD bit
under "if defined(WITH_THREADS)" verbatim to the "else" part, then doing
make clean ; make install FORCE_PKG_REGISTER=yes.

Note, however, that it is possible that you will have to rebuild all p5
ports that have XS portions in them.

There should be no consequences of doing this for most cases (excepting
situations in which a humongous stack size is needed, like amavisd), and it
is likely to fix your problem.

\Anton.
-- 
Matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and to the cobbler.
  -- L. Boltzmann



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