gamedevlists-windows

[GD-Windows] Process hanging inside ExitProcess()

[Javier A. <ja...@py...>]

Hi!

We currently have this annoying bug where, every few days, the game hangs
when quitting, inside CRT's call to ExitProcess() with one (sometimes two)
additional threads running. Of course, it only hangs in our retail builds,
without our helpful debug logs. When we try to break into the debugger, it
dumps the following message to the debug output:

DBG: Break command failed within 3 seconds.
DBG: Potential deadlock. Soft broken.

The usual suspect is the multithreaded sound DLL, since the only reason
ExitProcess() might hang seems to be while waiting for DLLs to detach. We
use the undocumented MSVC++ 6 trick for assigning names to threads (cool!)
so we can identify those in the debugger, but when we get this particular
deadlock, MSVC++ seems to "forget" the names, and stack traces only show a
couple levels inside KERNEL32, none of our user code. Thus we are not sure
which DLLs and/or threads are causing this deadlock.

Anybody has suggestions that can be helpful for debugging and/or solving
this problem?

Thanks in advance,
  Javier Arevalo
  Pyro Studios

[GD-Windows] Naming threads

[Javier A. <ja...@py...>]

Javier Arevalo <ja...@py...> wrote:

> We use the undocumented MSVC++ 6 trick for assigning names to
> threads (cool!) so we can identify those in the debugger

Some people asked me about this, so here's the code:

void BASE_SetThreadName(const char *pszName, unsigned threadId)
{
  // 10 chars maximum length of name.
  char buf[10];
  strncpy(buf, pszName, sizeof(buf));
  buf[sizeof(buf)-1] = '\0';

  enum { MS_VC_EXCEPTION = 0x406d1388 };

  struct THREADNAME_INFO
  {
      DWORD dwType;        // must be 0x1000
      LPCSTR pszName;       // pointer to name (in same addr space)
      DWORD dwThreadID;    // thread ID (-1 caller thread)
      DWORD dwFlags;       // reserved for future use, most be zero
  };

  THREADNAME_INFO info;
  info.dwType = 0x1000;
  info.pszName = pszName;
  info.dwThreadID = threadId? threadId : ::GetCurrentThreadId();
  info.dwFlags = 0;

  __try
  {
      RaiseException(MS_VC_EXCEPTION, 0, sizeof(info) / sizeof(DWORD),
(DWORD *)&info);
  }
  __except (EXCEPTION_CONTINUE_EXECUTION)
  {
  }
}

In the Debug | Threads dialog you can now see the names of the threads.

  Javier Arevalo
  Pyro Studios

RE: [GD-Windows] Process hanging inside ExitProcess()

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

If this happens on Win2k or WinXP, I would heartily recommend trying to
debug this with WinDBG (which is available as a free download as part of
the Windows 2000 DDK, and part of MSDN in the Windows DDK).

Cheers,

				/ h+


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gam...@li...
> [mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
> Javier Arevalo
> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 3:17 AM
> To: GDWindows
> Subject: [GD-Windows] Process hanging inside ExitProcess()
>
>
> Hi!
>
> We currently have this annoying bug where, every few days, the game hangs
> when quitting, inside CRT's call to ExitProcess() with one (sometimes two)
> additional threads running. Of course, it only hangs in our retail builds,
> without our helpful debug logs. When we try to break into the debugger, it
> dumps the following message to the debug output:
>
> DBG: Break command failed within 3 seconds.
> DBG: Potential deadlock. Soft broken.
>
> The usual suspect is the multithreaded sound DLL, since the only reason
> ExitProcess() might hang seems to be while waiting for DLLs to detach. We
> use the undocumented MSVC++ 6 trick for assigning names to threads (cool!)
> so we can identify those in the debugger, but when we get this particular
> deadlock, MSVC++ seems to "forget" the names, and stack traces only show a
> couple levels inside KERNEL32, none of our user code. Thus we are not sure
> which DLLs and/or threads are causing this deadlock.
>
> Anybody has suggestions that can be helpful for debugging and/or solving
> this problem?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>   Javier Arevalo
>   Pyro Studios
>
>
>
>
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