view docs/html/sdlsemwaittimeout.html @ 3069:caefe2344f65

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:38:25 +0000 From: John Bartholomew Subject: [SDL] SDL Semaphore implementation broken on Windows? Hi, Over the past couple of days, I've been battling with SDL, SDL_Mixer and SMPEG to try to find an audio hang bug. I believe I've found the problem, which I think is a race condition inside SDL's semaphore implementation (at least the Windows implementation). The semaphore code uses Windows' built in semaphore functions, but it also maintains a separate count value. This count value is updated with bare increment and decrement operations in SemPost and SemWaitTimeout - no locking primitives to protect them. In tracking down the apparent audio bug, I found that at some point a semaphore's count value was being decremented to -1, which is clearly not a valid value for it to take. I'm still not certain exactly what sequence of operations is occuring for this to happen, but I believe that overall it's a race condition between a thread calling SemPost (which increments the count) and the thread on the other end calling SemWait (which decrements it). I will try to make a test case to verify this, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to (threading errors being difficult to reproduce even in the best circumstances). However, assuming this is the cause of my problems, there is a very simple fix: Windows provides InterlockedIncrement() and InterlockedDecrement() functions to perform increments and decrements which are guaranteed to be atomic. So the fix is in thread/win32/SDL_syssem.c: replace occurrences of --sem->count with InterlockedDecrement(&sem->count); and replace occurrences of ++sem->count with InterlockedIncrement(&sem->count); This is using SDL v1.2.12, built with VC++ 2008 Express, running on a Core 2 duo processor.
author Sam Lantinga <slouken@libsdl.org>
date Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:39:18 +0000
parents 355632dca928
children
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>SDL_SemWaitTimeout</H1
><DIV
CLASS="REFNAMEDIV"
><A
NAME="AEN8120"
></A
><H2
>Name</H2
>SDL_SemWaitTimeout&nbsp;--&nbsp;Lock a semaphore, but only wait up to a specified maximum time.</DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSYNOPSISDIV"
><A
NAME="AEN8123"
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><H2
>Synopsis</H2
><DIV
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSIS"
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><P
></P
><PRE
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSISINFO"
>#include "SDL.h"
#include "SDL_thread.h"</PRE
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>int <B
CLASS="FSFUNC"
>SDL_SemWaitTimeout</B
></CODE
>(SDL_sem *sem, Uint32 timeout);</CODE
></P
><P
></P
></DIV
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8130"
></A
><H2
>Description</H2
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemWaitTimeout()</TT
> is a varient of
<A
HREF="sdlsemwait.html"
>SDL_SemWait</A
>
with a maximum timeout value.
If the value of the semaphore pointed to by <TT
CLASS="PARAMETER"
><I
>sem</I
></TT
> is
positive (greater than zero) it will atomically decrement the semaphore value
and return 0, otherwise it will wait up to <TT
CLASS="PARAMETER"
><I
>timeout</I
></TT
>
milliseconds trying to lock the semaphore. This function is to be avoided if
possible since on some platforms it is implemented by polling the semaphore
every millisecond in a busy loop.</P
><P
>After <TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemWaitTimeout()</TT
> is successful, the semaphore
can be released and its count atomically incremented by a successful call to
<A
HREF="sdlsempost.html"
>SDL_SemPost</A
>.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8140"
></A
><H2
>Return Value</H2
><P
>Returns <SPAN
CLASS="RETURNVALUE"
>0</SPAN
> if the semaphore was successfully locked or
either <SPAN
CLASS="RETURNVALUE"
>SDL_MUTEX_TIMEDOUT</SPAN
> or <SPAN
CLASS="RETURNVALUE"
>-1</SPAN
>
if the timeout period was exceeded or there was an error, respectivly.</P
><P
>If the semaphore was not successfully locked, the semaphore will be unchanged.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="AEN8147"
></A
><H2
>Examples</H2
><P
><PRE
CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING"
>res = SDL_SemWaitTimeout(my_sem, WAIT_TIMEOUT_MILLISEC);

if (res == SDL_MUTEX_TIMEDOUT) {
        return TRY_AGAIN;
}
if (res == -1) {
        return WAIT_ERROR;
}

...

SDL_SemPost(my_sem);</PRE
></P
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><A
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></A
><H2
>See Also</H2
><P
><A
HREF="sdlcreatesemaphore.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_CreateSemaphore</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdldestroysemaphore.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_DestroySemaphore</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdlsemwait.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemWait</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdlsemtrywait.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemTryWait</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdlsempost.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemPost</TT
></A
>,
<A
HREF="sdlsemvalue.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>SDL_SemValue</TT
></A
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