Deadlock of the process tree when running make

[Takashi Yano]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2022 02:17:38 +0300
Alexey Izbyshev wrote:
> On 2022-04-13 19:48, Alexey Izbyshev wrote:
> > On 2022-04-11 13:10, Alexey Izbyshev wrote:
> > What's probably not normal is the behavior of the hanging conhost.exe.
> > I've compared the points where conhost.exe is blocked, and all but one
> > threads in the model case are doing the same things as in the hanging
> > case, but the remaining thread is blocked in
> > ReadFile("\Device\NamedPipe\") (i.e. the read end of "hWritePipe" of
> > pcon) instead of trying to enter a critical section like thread 1
> > above. So now I'm starting to doubt that it's a cygwin bug and not
> > some conhost.exe bug.
> > 
> > I'll try to poke around the hanging conhost.exe some more, and also
> > may be will try to create a faster reproducer.
> > 
> I've studied conhost.exe hang, and it indeed looks like it's buggy.
> 
> TLDR: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/pull/12181
> 
> The full story:
> 
> I dumped conhost.exe, opened the dump in windbg and looked at the stack 
> trace of the hanging thread:
> 
> ntdll!NtWaitForAlertByThreadId+0x14
> ntdll!RtlpWaitOnAddressWithTimeout+0x81
> ntdll!RtlpWaitOnAddress+0xae
> ntdll!RtlpWaitOnCriticalSection+0xfd
> ntdll!RtlpEnterCriticalSectionContended+0x1c4
> ntdll!RtlEnterCriticalSection+0x42
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::Render::Renderer::_PaintFrameForEngine+0x54
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::Render::Renderer::TriggerTeardown+0x19e60
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::Interactivity::ServiceLocator::RundownAndExit+0x21
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::PtySignalInputThread::_GetData+0x65
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::PtySignalInputThread::_InputThread+0x25
> kernel32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x14
> ntdll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21
> 
> By looking at assembly, I've found that it hangs *after* ReadFile() on 
> the pipe completes, so the problem is definitely not a leak of 
> hWritePipe in bash.exe or elsewhere.
> 
> Using the function names, I've found this issue: 
> https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1810.
> 
> This is a different one, but the discussion and the patch shows that 
> synchronization on startup/shutdown is a disaster.
> 
> Then I looked at the code and identified that hang happens while 
> attempting to lock the console at [1]. After studying how this lock is 
> used in other parts of the code, I noticed that 
> PtySignalInputThread::_Shutdown() (which is further up in the call stack 
> of the hanging function) uses ProcessCtrlEvents() incorrectly, because 
> the latter unconditionally unlocks the console, but the lock is never 
> taken by this thread at this point. Then I looked at a more recent 
> version of the code and discovered the patch to _Shutdown() which I 
> referenced above.
> 
> I've also verified that assembly of _Shutdown() (which is inlined into 
> PtySignalInputThread::_GetData()) corresponds to the unpatched version 
> (i.e. without LockConsole() call):
> 
> call    conhost!CloseConsoleProcessState (00007ff6`22e7013c)
> call    conhost!ProcessCtrlEvents (00007ff6`22e262a0)
> mov     ecx,6Dh
> call    
> conhost!Microsoft::Console::Interactivity::ServiceLocator::RundownAndExit 
> (00007ff6`22e3c730)
> 
> I'm not sure why this bug is not triggered more frequently, but one 
> possible reason, as indicated by comment [2], is that the bad path is 
> only taken if there are live clients after ClosePseudoConsole() is 
> called, which is probably rare.
> 
> A potential workaround on Cygwin side would be to ensure that the 
> pseudoconsole doesn't have clients before calling ClosePseudoConsole(), 
> but I don't know whether it's possible.

I am not sure yet what is essential, but the current code closes
pseudo console only if there is no other process which is attaching
to the pseudo console. I wonder why javac.exe is remaining as
zombie. The parent bash.exe calls ColosePseudoConsole() when
child non-cygwin app is terminated, i.e., after WaitForSingleObject()
for child process handle returns.
https://www.cygwin.com/git/?p=newlib-cygwin.git;a=blob;f=winsup/cygwin/spawn.cc;h=81dba5a941e919ea2514013069aef22c6fad8004;hb=7ac0767053e278f0ce9811bf6f77278bd2f49c20#l1009

What does the "zombie" mean? Is it listed in the process list of
ProcessHacker? I still suspect that the zombie javac.exe holds
the  hWritePipe handle leaked from parent bash.exe.

> [1] 
> https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/9b92986b49bed8cc41fde4d6ef080921c41e6d9e/src/renderer/base/renderer.cpp#L75
> 
> [2] 
> https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/9b92986b49bed8cc41fde4d6ef080921c41e6d9e/src/host/PtySignalInputThread.cpp#L205


-- 
Takashi Yano <takashi.yano@nifty.ne.jp>