gh-114271: Fix race in Thread.join() (#114839)

There is a race between when `Thread._tstate_lock` is released[^1] in `Thread._wait_for_tstate_lock()`
and when `Thread._stop()` asserts[^2] that it is unlocked. Consider the following execution
involving threads A, B, and C:

1. A starts.
2. B joins A, blocking on its `_tstate_lock`.
3. C joins A, blocking on its `_tstate_lock`.
4. A finishes and releases its `_tstate_lock`.
5. B acquires A's `_tstate_lock` in `_wait_for_tstate_lock()`, releases it, but is swapped
   out before calling `_stop()`.
6. C is scheduled, acquires A's `_tstate_lock` in `_wait_for_tstate_lock()` but is swapped
   out before releasing it.
7. B is scheduled, calls `_stop()`, which asserts that A's `_tstate_lock` is not held.
   However, C holds it, so the assertion fails.

The race can be reproduced[^3] by inserting sleeps at the appropriate points in
the threading code. To do so, run the `repro_join_race.py` from the linked repo.

There are two main parts to this PR:

1. `_tstate_lock` is replaced with an event that is attached to `PyThreadState`.
   The event is set by the runtime prior to the thread being cleared (in the same
   place that `_tstate_lock` was released). `Thread.join()` blocks waiting for the
   event to be set.
2. `_PyInterpreterState_WaitForThreads()` provides the ability to wait for all
   non-daemon threads to exit. To do so, an `is_daemon` predicate was added to
   `PyThreadState`. This field is set each time a thread is created. `threading._shutdown()`
   now calls into `_PyInterpreterState_WaitForThreads()` instead of waiting on
   `_tstate_lock`s.

[^1]: 441affc9e7/Lib/threading.py (L1201)
[^2]: 441affc9e7/Lib/threading.py (L1115)
[^3]: 8194653279

---------

Co-authored-by: blurb-it[bot] <43283697+blurb-it[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Antoine Pitrou <antoine@python.org>
This commit is contained in:
mpage 2024-03-16 05:56:30 -07:00 • committed by GitHub
parent 86bc40dd41
commit 33da0e844c
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12 changed files with 771 additions and 643 deletions

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@ -161,32 +161,6 @@ struct _ts {
*/
uintptr_t critical_section;
/* Called when a thread state is deleted normally, but not when it
* is destroyed after fork().
* Pain: to prevent rare but fatal shutdown errors (issue 18808),
* Thread.join() must wait for the join'ed thread's tstate to be unlinked
* from the tstate chain. That happens at the end of a thread's life,
* in pystate.c.
* The obvious way doesn't quite work: create a lock which the tstate
* unlinking code releases, and have Thread.join() wait to acquire that
* lock. The problem is that we _are_ at the end of the thread's life:
* if the thread holds the last reference to the lock, decref'ing the
* lock will delete the lock, and that may trigger arbitrary Python code
* if there's a weakref, with a callback, to the lock. But by this time
* _PyRuntime.gilstate.tstate_current is already NULL, so only the simplest
* of C code can be allowed to run (in particular it must not be possible to
* release the GIL).
* So instead of holding the lock directly, the tstate holds a weakref to
* the lock: that's the value of on_delete_data below. Decref'ing a
* weakref is harmless.
* on_delete points to _threadmodule.c's static release_sentinel() function.
* After the tstate is unlinked, release_sentinel is called with the
* weakref-to-lock (on_delete_data) argument, and release_sentinel releases
* the indirectly held lock.
*/
void (*on_delete)(void *);
void *on_delete_data;
int coroutine_origin_tracking_depth;
PyObject *async_gen_firstiter;

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@ -153,16 +153,6 @@ PyAPI_FUNC(void) PyEvent_Wait(PyEvent *evt);
// and 0 if the timeout expired or thread was interrupted.
PyAPI_FUNC(int) PyEvent_WaitTimed(PyEvent *evt, PyTime_t timeout_ns);
// A one-time event notification with reference counting.
typedef struct _PyEventRc {
PyEvent event;
Py_ssize_t refcount;
} _PyEventRc;
_PyEventRc *_PyEventRc_New(void);
void _PyEventRc_Incref(_PyEventRc *erc);
void _PyEventRc_Decref(_PyEventRc *erc);
// _PyRawMutex implements a word-sized mutex that that does not depend on the
// parking lot API, and therefore can be used in the parking lot
// implementation.

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@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ struct _pythread_runtime_state {
} stubs;
#endif
// Linked list of ThreadHandleObjects
// Linked list of ThreadHandles
struct llist_node handles;
};