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Locksmith

Locksmith is a library for debugging locking in C, C++, or Objective C programs.

It's designed to catch common locking errors at runtime that might otherwise lead to deadlocks or crashes. Locksmith is built on top of pthreads.

How do I build the source code?

./configure
make
sudo make install

How to use Locksmith

Using locksmith is simple. You do not need to recompile your program. Just run your program with the LD_PRELOAD environment variable set to the locksmith library. For example,

LKSMITH_LOG=syslog LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/liblksmith.so /bin/ls

What kinds of errors does Locksmith catch?

  1. Locking inversions. For example, if one thread locks mutex A and then tries to lock mutex B, and another thread locks mutex B and then tries to locks mutex A.

  2. Freeing a mutex, spinlock, or condition variable that you currently hold. In the pthreads library, freeing a mutex, spinlock, or condition variable that you currently hold can cause undefined behavior. You must release it first. Locksmith issues an error message in this case.

  3. Unlocking a mutex from a different thread than the one which locked it. This is another scenario which triggers undefined behavior in pthreads, but which Locksmith turns into a hard error.

  4. Calling pthread_cond_wait on something that isn't a mutex locked by the current thread.

  5. Simultaneously calling pthread_cond_wait on the same condition variable using different mutexes.

What choices are available for LKSMITH_LOG?

LKSMITH_LOG=syslog

This will redirect all output to syslog.

LKSMITH_LOG=stderr

This will redirect all output to standard error.

LKSMITH_LOG=stdout

This will redirect all output to standard output.

LKSMITH_LOG=file:///tmp/foo

This will redirect all output to /tmp/foo. Substitute your own file name as appropriate.

What languages and libraries is Locksmith compatible with?

Locksmith should be compatible with every library built on top of pthreads in C or C++. This includes boost::mutex, KDE's QMutex, glib's Glib::Mutex, and so forth. Locksmith has no problems with global constructors or destructors in C++. Locksmith also works with mutexes that have been initialized statically with PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER. Finally, Locksmith handles pthreads mutexes created and used in a shared library independent of the main executable.

What license is Locksmith under?

Locksmith is released under the 2-clause BSD license. See LICENSE.txt for details.

TODO

  • Expose the lock APIs to client code. This will make Locksmith usable in code that implements its own locking primitives.
  • Support pthread rwlocks
  • Support pthread barriers
  • Add the ability to dump out debugging information about the state of all locks on command.
  • Support thread cancellation (?)
  • Support POSIX semaphores
  • Add a way to suppress deadlock warnings through the use of compile-time annotations.
  • Add the ability to name mutexes and threads through the use of compile-time annotations.
  • Better support for debugging cross-process mutexes and spin-locks (perhaps by putting Locksmith globals into a shared memory segment?) This is tricky because cross-process locks won't have the same memory address in different processes.

Contact information

Colin Patrick McCabe cmccabe@alumni.cmu.edu

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