Bug 68610 - various thread-safety issues involving static variables
Summary: various thread-safety issues involving static variables
Status: RESOLVED MOVED
Alias: None
Product: dbus
Classification: Unclassified
Component: core (show other bugs)
Version: 1.5
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Simon McVittie
QA Contact: D-Bus Maintainers
URL: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~smcv/dbu...
Whiteboard: review?
Keywords: patch
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-08-27 13:35 UTC by Simon McVittie
Modified: 2018-10-12 21:16 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe (4.15 KB, patch)
2013-08-27 13:35 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe (4.27 KB, patch)
2013-08-27 13:41 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_file_path_extract_elements_from_tail: don't misuse static variable (1.52 KB, patch)
2013-08-29 12:05 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_get_autolaunch_address: don't make argv static (875 bytes, patch)
2013-08-29 12:06 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
Comment some suspicious uses of static variables (1.36 KB, patch)
2013-08-29 12:06 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_win_startup_winsock: be thread-safe (2.00 KB, patch)
2013-08-29 12:06 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_check_setuid: comment on thread-safety (893 bytes, patch)
2013-08-29 12:07 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
Move some sysdeps stuff only used by the dbus-daemon outside libdbus (21.91 KB, patch)
2013-08-29 12:17 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
Fix declaration of _dbus_win_startup_winsock (955 bytes, patch)
2013-09-02 16:33 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
_dbus_modify_sigpipe: be thread-safe (7.58 KB, patch)
2013-09-03 12:29 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review
various: comment static variables that are locked or otherwise OK (5.75 KB, patch)
2013-09-05 11:50 UTC, Simon McVittie
Details | Splinter Review

Description Simon McVittie 2013-08-27 13:35:07 UTC
Created attachment 84714 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe

Sharing a static variable between threads is not safe in general,
and this function is used in the shared libdbus (for nonce files),
so it can't rely on being single-threaded.

---

This patch probably only applies to master. For dbus-1.6, we can have a simpler patch, because _DBUS_LOCK() can't fail.
Comment 1 Simon McVittie 2013-08-27 13:36:13 UTC
Comment on attachment 84714 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe

Oops, that patch doesn't actually compile (a variable is undeclared). I'll try again.
Comment 2 Simon McVittie 2013-08-27 13:41:05 UTC
Created attachment 84715 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe

Sharing a static variable between threads is not safe in general,
and this function is used in the shared libdbus (for nonce files),
so it can't rely on being single-threaded.
Comment 3 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 11:03:46 UTC
Comment on attachment 84715 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_tmpdir: be thread-safe

Review of attachment 84715 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 4 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:05:12 UTC
There are a bunch of other misused static variables.

I'll attach easy patches for most of them, but the Windows implementations of _dbus_replace_install_prefix() and _dbus_windows_get_datadir() can't be thread-safe without a redesign: sharing a static buffer for different results just can't work.

I'd suggest making them append to a DBusString - then the one caller of _dbus_replace_install_prefix() outside the sysdeps, which currently uses _dbus_strdup() on the result (without checking for NULL!), can be changed to use _dbus_string_steal_data().
Comment 5 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:05:48 UTC
Created attachment 84830 [details] [review]
_dbus_file_path_extract_elements_from_tail: don't misuse  static variable

If we _dbus_verbose() from more than one thread at the same time,
we don't want to get into trouble with static variables (and I don't
think micro-optimizing this function is really worth it anyway).
Comment 6 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:06:01 UTC
Created attachment 84831 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_autolaunch_address: don't make argv static

This function could be accessed from any thread, which would mean it
scribbles on argv twice.
Comment 7 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:06:14 UTC
Created attachment 84832 [details] [review]
Comment some suspicious uses of static variables
Comment 8 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:06:49 UTC
Created attachment 84833 [details] [review]
_dbus_win_startup_winsock: be thread-safe
Comment 9 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:07:04 UTC
Created attachment 84834 [details] [review]
_dbus_check_setuid: comment on thread-safety
Comment 10 Simon McVittie 2013-08-29 12:17:46 UTC
Created attachment 84837 [details] [review]
Move some sysdeps stuff only used by the dbus-daemon outside libdbus

This means we don't need to worry about whether it's thread-safe,
and makes libdbus a little smaller.

---

(In reply to comment #4)
> the Windows implementations
> of _dbus_replace_install_prefix() and _dbus_windows_get_datadir() can't be
> thread-safe without a redesign: sharing a static buffer for different
> results just can't work.

They're still not thread-safe, but now it doesn't matter.
Comment 11 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 13:30:06 UTC
Comment on attachment 84830 [details] [review]
_dbus_file_path_extract_elements_from_tail: don't misuse  static variable

Review of attachment 84830 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 12 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 13:53:27 UTC
Comment on attachment 84831 [details] [review]
_dbus_get_autolaunch_address: don't make argv static

Review of attachment 84831 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 13 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 13:54:55 UTC
Comment on attachment 84832 [details] [review]
Comment some suspicious uses of static variables

Review of attachment 84832 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 14 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 13:57:55 UTC
Comment on attachment 84833 [details] [review]
_dbus_win_startup_winsock: be thread-safe

Review of attachment 84833 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 15 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 14:00:48 UTC
Comment on attachment 84834 [details] [review]
_dbus_check_setuid: comment on thread-safety

Review of attachment 84834 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: dbus/dbus-sysdeps-unix.c
@@ +4177,2 @@
>    static dbus_bool_t check_setuid_initialised;
>    static dbus_bool_t is_setuid;

no need to set an initial value on link time ?
Comment 16 Ralf Habacker 2013-08-29 15:16:54 UTC
Comment on attachment 84837 [details] [review]
Move some sysdeps stuff only used by the dbus-daemon outside libdbus

Review of attachment 84837 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

comiled and cross compiled with cmake on linux without any problems

looks good
Comment 17 Simon McVittie 2013-08-30 14:54:54 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> no need to set an initial value on link time ?

No, C guarantees that extern and static variables are zeroed if not otherwise initialized (whereas "auto" variables - i.e. local variables on the stack - have undefined contents).

On Unix this is usually implemented by the runtime linker: the sections in a binary include "initialized variables" (with the initial values stored in the binary, and mapped with copy-on-write) and "uninitialized variables" (with only a length in the binary, and the linker allocates enough writable, initially-zero memory to match the size of that section).
Comment 18 Simon McVittie 2013-08-30 14:56:52 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> No, C guarantees that extern and static variables are zeroed if not
> otherwise initialized

(Strictly speaking, it guarantees that arithmetic types are 0 and pointers are NULL, but those correspond to all-bits-zero on any sensible platform.)
Comment 19 Simon McVittie 2013-09-02 16:33:08 UTC
Created attachment 85080 [details] [review]
Fix declaration of _dbus_win_startup_winsock

This regressed in commit b7a91bfd.

---

... which was Attachment #84833 [details]. Sorry about that.
Comment 20 Ralf Habacker 2013-09-02 19:38:16 UTC
Comment on attachment 85080 [details] [review]
Fix declaration of _dbus_win_startup_winsock

Review of attachment 85080 [details] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

looks good
Comment 21 Simon McVittie 2013-09-03 11:28:51 UTC
(In reply to comment #20)
> Fix declaration of _dbus_win_startup_winsock

> looks good

Thanks, merged.
Comment 22 Simon McVittie 2013-09-03 12:29:22 UTC
Created attachment 85113 [details] [review]
_dbus_modify_sigpipe: be thread-safe

This needs new atomic primitives: we don't have "set to a value",
and in fact that's a bit annoying to implement in terms of gcc
intrinsics. "Set to 0" and "set to nonzero" are easy, though.
Also add a trivial sanity-check for the atomic primitives (it doesn't
verify that they're atomic, but does verify that they return the right
things).
Comment 23 Simon McVittie 2013-09-03 12:31:39 UTC
Remaining static things whose thread-safety looks suspicious:

* dbus-internals.c: verbose_initted, verbose (not particularly important)
* dbus-internals.c: module_name (Windows only)
* dbus-sysdeps-thread-win.c: dbus_cond_event_tls (Windows only)
* dbus-sysdeps-win.c: hDBusDaemonMutex etc. (Windows only)
Comment 24 Simon McVittie 2013-09-05 11:50:56 UTC
Created attachment 85241 [details] [review]
various: comment static variables that are locked or  otherwise OK
Comment 25 GitLab Migration User 2018-10-12 21:16:49 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus/issues/88.


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