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Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2022 18:54:17 -0400
From: Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com, Alexey Izbyshev <izbyshev@...ras.ru>
Subject: Re: Illegal killlock skipping when transitioning to
 single-threaded state

On Mon, Oct 03, 2022 at 11:27:05PM +0200, Szabolcs Nagy wrote:
> * Szabolcs Nagy <nsz@...t70.net> [2022-10-03 15:26:15 +0200]:
> 
> > * Alexey Izbyshev <izbyshev@...ras.ru> [2022-10-03 09:16:03 +0300]:
> > > On 2022-09-19 18:29, Rich Felker wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 03:46:53AM +0300, Alexey Izbyshev wrote:
> > ...
> > > > > Reordering the "libc.need_locks = -1" assignment and
> > > > > UNLOCK(E->killlock) and providing a store barrier between them
> > > > > should fix the issue.
> > > > 
> > > > I think this all sounds correct. I'm not sure what you mean by a store
> > > > barrier between them, since all lock and unlock operations are already
> > > > full barriers.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Before sending the report I tried to infer the intended ordering semantics
> > > of LOCK/UNLOCK by looking at their implementations. For AArch64, I didn't
> > > see why they would provide a full barrier (my reasoning is below), so I
> > > concluded that probably acquire/release semantics was intended in general
> > > and suggested an extra store barrier to prevent hoisting of "libc.need_locks
> > > = -1" store spelled after UNLOCK(E->killlock) back into the critical
> > > section.
> > > 
> > > UNLOCK is implemented via a_fetch_add(). On AArch64, it is a simple
> > > a_ll()/a_sc() loop without extra barriers, and a_ll()/a_sc() are implemented
> > > via load-acquire/store-release instructions. Therefore, if we consider a
> > > LOCK/UNLOCK critical section containing only plain loads and stores, (a) any
> > > such memory access can be reordered with the initial ldaxr in UNLOCK, and
> > > (b) any plain load following UNLOCK can be reordered with stlxr (assuming
> > > the processor predicts that stlxr succeeds), and further, due to (a), with
> > > any memory access inside the critical section. Therefore, UNLOCK is not full
> > > barrier. Is this right?
> > 
> > i dont think this is right.
> 
> 
> i think i was wrong and you are right.
> 
> so with your suggested swap of UNLOCK(killlock) and need_locks=-1 and
> starting with 'something == 0' the exiting E and remaining R threads:
> 
> E:something=1      // protected by killlock
> E:UNLOCK(killlock)
> E:need_locks=-1
> 
> R:LOCK(unrelated)  // reads need_locks == -1
> R:need_locks=0
> R:UNLOCK(unrelated)
> R:LOCK(killlock)   // does not lock
> R:read something   // can it be 0 ?
> 
> and here something can be 0 (ie. not protected by killlock) on aarch64
> because
> 
> T1
> 	something=1
> 	ldaxr ... killlock
> 	stlxr ... killlock
> 	need_locks=-1
> 
> T2
> 	x=need_locks
> 	ldaxr ... unrelated
> 	stlxr ... unrelated
> 	y=something
> 
> can end with x==-1 and y==0.
> 
> and to fix it, both a_fetch_add and a_cas need an a_barrier.
> 
> i need to think how to support such lock usage on aarch64
> without adding too many dmb.

I don't really understand this, but FWIW gcc emits 

    ldxr
    ...
    stlxr
    ...
    dmb ish

for __sync_val_compare_and_swap. So this is probably the right thing
we should have. And it seems to match what the kernel folks discussed
here:

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-February/229588.html

I wondered if there are similar issues for any others archs which need
review, but it looks like all the other llsc archs have explicit
pre/post barriers defined.

Rich

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