per-module per-thread constructors and destructors

Frank Cusack fcusack at fcusack.com
Tue Aug 30 22:15:34 CEST 2005


I need to add a thread local variable to rlm_otp.  It's a per-thread fd
which connects to another program running locally.  rlm_otp makes requests
of it and it returns results.  The semantics of that program does not
guarantee sequencing of results unless each request thread has its own
connection.  That is, if I have a global fd, the response received by
one thread may not be to the correct request:

t1			t2
get_state(foo)		get_state(bar)
-> write(foo)		-> write(bar)
-> read()		-> read()
   -> bar		   -> foo

The other program may return bar first, and even if it returned results
in the order received, because both threads are blocked in read(), either
might pick up the result for the other.  An fd per thread fixes this.
It also fixes the problem that writes() might interleave (atomic writes
are only guaranteed in certain cases which won't be met here), but that
is just icing for the cake.

The problem, though, is that on thread exit no cleanup is done.  I want
to add two functions to threads.c: register_constructor() and
register_destructor().  When a module is instantiated, it can call these
to register functions to be called on thread creation and destruction.
(rlm_otp will register a destructor which closes the fd.)

It's fairly trivial, but it touches the "core" of freeradius, and it affects
thread behavior, so I wanted to be sure there were no objections before
adding it.

-frank



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