#155 NetBSD pthreads incompatible with nsd

[Zoran Vasiljevic]

The native implementation of pthreads on NetBSD is
incompatible with AOLserver nsthreads library wrapper.
The pthread_key_create() on NetBSD pthreads
implementation assumes valid tls keys to start
with 0, while nsthreads wrapper assumes valid tls keys
to start with 1. This breaks the nsd process startup and
the server cores with error message:

Ns_Tls: invalid key: 0: should be between 1 and 100

Workaround, for the time being is s to use the
portable pthread library:
http://www.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/~k-abe/PTL/

Thanks to Kulcsár Ferenc <crusader@netbsd.hu>
for reporting this and providing access to NetBSD
machine for debugging.

[Dossy Shiobara]

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Has this been fixed in NetBSD's pthreads implementation yet?

This actually sounds like a bug somewhere else in AOLserver
that's only showing up under certain circumstances.
The "key" should start from 1 which shouldn't have anything
to do with pthread_key_create() but rather Ns_TlsAlloc().

When the "Ns_Tls: invalid key: 0: ..." error happens, that
means Ns_TlsSet() or Ns_TlsGet() was handed a keyPtr
containing 0 instead of 1 .. NS_THREAD_MAXTLS.

[Zoran Vasiljevic]

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I have no idea. I can ping the guy who reported it.
BTW, I was debugging the problem then and it was
really the difference in pthread_key_create() stuff
that exposed the problem.
Keep this open until we get some response from Ferenc.
I do not have NetBSD system here so it is difficult for me
to repproduce or investigate the issue.

[Ian A. Harding]

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I have been successfully using AOLServer 4.0.7 on
NetBSD2.0_BETA for a while. NetBSD 2 is the first version
to include "native" threads, based on the mit-pthread
package. In previous versions, you had to "choose" your
thread library. I had chosen PTL so I can't swear this
isn't a problem with mit-pthread under NetBSD 1.6.2, but I
doubt it.

I had the same error message under NetBSD2.0_BETA when the
hostname could not be resolved, but that was a few patch
versions ago. It seems to be fixed now. Now I get

Starting nsd.
[02/Sep/2004:06:39:33][6604.3214934016][-main-] Error: dns:
gethostbyname failed: temporary error - try again
[02/Sep/2004:06:39:33][6604.3214934016][-main-] Fatal: could
not resolve workstation.tpchd.org via dns

in that case, but usually, my name resolves.

I have build a pkgsrc package for NetBSD 2.0 which is
available at pkgsrc-wip.sf.net. Once 2.0 is released, I
would like to see this package become part of the main
pkgsrc tree.
-----------------
bash-2.05b# uname -a
NetBSD workstation.tpchd.org 2.0_BETA NetBSD 2.0_BETA
(iharding) #0: Thu May 13 14:25:35 UTC 2004
iharding@:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/iharding
i386bash-2.05b# /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/nsd start
Starting nsd.
bash-2.05b# [02/Sep/2004:06:47:25][2353.3214934016][-main-]
Warning: config.tcl: nsssl not loaded -- key/cert files do
not exist.
[02/Sep/2004:06:47:25][2353.3214934016][-main-] Notice:
encoding: loaded: iso8859-1
bash-2.05b# ps -aux | grep nsd
nsadmin 2353 0.4 0.5 3132 2816 ?? Ssa 6:47AM 0:00.07
/usr/pkg/bin/nsd -t /usr/pk
root 7315 0.0 0.1 88 432 p2 R+ 6:47AM 0:00.00 grep nsd
bash-2.05b# pkg_info | grep aol
aolserver-4.0.7 America Online's open source web server

[Dossy Shiobara]

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I'm closing this ticket with resolution "Won't Fix" as it
appears to me that this is an issue with NetBSD's support
for POSIX threads, not with AOLserver code itself.

Ian has verified that AOLserver 4.0.7 works as designed on
NetBSD 2.0 using mit-pthread, as well as NetBSD 1.6.2 using PTL.

Thanks.