NuttX implemented fork() and vfork() as the same function. Both were libc
wrappers around a single up_fork() syscall; vfork() differed only by a
trailing waitpid(). Underneath, the child joined the parent's address
environment -- the same addrenv_join() that pthread_create() uses -- and got
a private copy of the stack. So the child shared .data, .bss and the heap
with its parent and ran concurrently with it.
That is not fork(). It is vfork()-with-a-private-stack under fork()'s name,
and the history says so: today's fork() is NuttX's old vfork(), renamed in
c33d1c9c97 (2023) without any change of behaviour. The failure was silent --
a program written against POSIX fork() compiled, ran, and had its child's
writes land in the parent's variables.
Separate them into two primitives, chosen by which function the caller
called rather than by what the hardware happens to be:
fork() child gets its own copy of the parent's memory at the same
virtual addresses; runs concurrently. Only where an address
environment can be duplicated -- elsewhere it is not declared at
all, so calling it is a build error naming the function.
vfork() child shares the parent's memory; parent suspended until the
child _exit()s or exec()s. Implementable everywhere.
Below libc there is still one syscall. up_fork() gains a bool saying which
primitive the caller used, since the per-architecture register snapshot is
the same for both, and passes it to nxtask_setup_fork(), which is the single
place the memory semantics are decided. The argument arrives in the first
argument register and is never touched: each architecture's snapshot takes
some other call-clobbered register for its scratch, so the flag is simply
still there when the C worker is called.
The vfork() parent suspension moves out of libc into nxtask_start_fork(),
released from nxsched_release_tcb() by nxtask_resume_vfork(). Two things
follow: the parent is resumed at exec(), since exec_swap() has already handed
the child's pid to the loaded program by the time the vfork stub exits, and
vfork() no longer depends on CONFIG_SCHED_WAITPID.
Releasing there requires one fix in nxtask_exit(). It raises rtcb->lockcount
directly rather than through sched_lock() while it tears the TCB down, so the
nxsem_post() that wakes the vfork() parent leaves it queued where a blocked
task collects while pre-emption is off -- g_pendingtasks, or g_readytorun on
SMP -- and the matching raw lockcount-- does not publish it the way
sched_unlock() would, leaving the parent stranded with nothing to move it on.
The fix mirrors sched_unlock() for each case: nxsched_merge_pending(), or
nxsched_deliver_task() under CONFIG_SMP. Both are no-ops while pre-emption is
still disabled, and up_exit() re-reads this_task() afterwards, so a change of
the ready-to-run head is honoured. Without it vfork() deadlocks wherever no
other task happens to call sched_unlock() afterwards -- rv-virt:nsh64 and
rv-virt:pnsh64, where NSH is blocked in waitpid() holding the lock, and
qemu-armv8a:citest_smp, which hangs the moment the vfork() test runs.
fork() is built on a new addrenv_fork(), backed by an up_addrenv_fork() hook
that duplicates an address environment into freshly allocated pages mapped at
the same virtual addresses -- unlike up_addrenv_clone(), which copies only
the representation and leaves both pointing at the same page tables. The
child then adopts the parent's stack geometry rather than being given a
relocated copy: a pointer to a stack local taken before fork() must name the
same object in the child that it named in the parent, and the parent's stack
is already in the duplicate, with its contents, at the parent's address.
No architecture implements up_addrenv_fork() yet, so this commit leaves
fork() unavailable everywhere. That is the intended state. It withdraws
fork() from ARCH_ARM, flat ARCH_ARM64, ARCH_RISCV, ARCH_SIM and ARCH_X86_64,
where until now it named the sharing primitive; per-architecture patches
restore it, with POSIX semantics, as up_addrenv_fork() lands. In the
meantime the sharing primitive is still there under the name that describes
it: vfork() for a child that runs a program, pthread_create() for a second
flow of control that shares memory, posix_spawn() for both at once.
Kconfig: ARCH_HAVE_VFORK inherits ARCH_HAVE_FORK's select lines, conditions
included, so no configuration gains machinery; ARCH_HAVE_FORK is redefined to
mean "can provide POSIX fork() semantics" and now depends on ARCH_ADDRENV.
There is one deliberate departure from "verbatim". ARCH_ARM selected the
fork family unconditionally, BUILD_KERNEL included, and that has never
worked: on a kernel build the architecture's fork entry point sees the
kernel's return address and stack pointer rather than the caller's, so the
child resumes at a kernel address. On qemu-armv7a:knsh master faults in
ostest's fork case with "Child did not run" and then a data abort; without
the condition this change faults the same way through vfork(). ARCH_ARM64
and ARCH_X86_64 already carried "if !BUILD_KERNEL" for exactly this reason --
ARM was the outlier. Conditioning it turns a runtime fault into an honest
absence, which is the whole point of the change; arch/arm takes the condition
off again in the patch that adds its saved-syscall-frame path. Only the
MMU-capable ARM ports are affected, since Cortex-M cannot build BUILD_KERNEL
at all.
Also fixes two latent syntax errors found on the way: a missing comma in
riscv_fork.c and mips_fork.c, both in *_FRAMEPOINTER && !SAVE_GP branches
that are never compiled today.
BREAKING CHANGE: fork() is withdrawn from every architecture. It is no
longer declared in unistd.h, so code that calls it fails to build with an error
naming the function, and the sharing behaviour it used to have is gone rather
than renamed. CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_FORK no longer means "fork() exists"; it means
"this configuration can provide POSIX fork() semantics", and no architecture
selects it yet.
Quick fix, chosen by why the call was made:
to run a program vfork() + exec*(), or better posix_spawn()
a second flow of control that pthread_create()
shares the caller's memory
a genuinely independent copy keep fork(), and wait for the per-arch patch
of the process that implements up_addrenv_fork() and selects
CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_FORK
Out-of-tree code that tests CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_FORK to decide whether a
fork-then-exec path is available wants CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_VFORK instead, which is
selected in exactly the places CONFIG_ARCH_HAVE_FORK used to be. The full
migration guide is Documentation/guides/fork_vfork_migration.rst.
Assisted-by: Claude Code:claude-opus-5
Signed-off-by: Marco Casaroli <marco.casaroli@gmail.com>
debug.h is a NuttX-specific, non-POSIX header. Placing it in the
top-level include/ directory creates naming conflicts with external
projects that define their own debug.h.
This commit moves the canonical header to include/nuttx/debug.h,
following the NuttX convention for non-POSIX/non-standard headers,
and updates all in-tree references.
A backward-compatibility shim is left at include/debug.h that
emits a deprecation #warning and re-includes <nuttx/debug.h>,
allowing out-of-tree code to continue building while migrating.
Signed-off-by: Piyush Patle <piyushpatle228@gmail.com>
Move pthread mutex operations from kernel-space syscall
interface to user-space implementations
to reduce syscall overhead. Relocate mutex holder list
tracking from task control block (tcb) to
thread local storage (tls) to improve memory layout and
cache efficiency. Add helper macros for
conditional mutex implementations and update syscall
interface accordingly.
Signed-off-by: hujun5 <hujun5@xiaomi.com>
Move tls_dup_info() call to after child process priority is set, ensuring
the child's pid is properly initialized before duplicating TLS information.
This fixes incorrect thread ID assignment during task fork operations.
Signed-off-by: hujun5 <hujun5@xiaomi.com>
Move addrenv_join() call after group_initialize() in nxtask_setup_fork() to fix
null pointer dereference. addrenv_join() accesses child->group which is
initialized by group_initialize(), so the operations must be sequenced
correctly. Reorder initialization to ensure child task group is set up before
address environment join operations.
Signed-off-by: hujun5 <hujun5@xiaomi.com>
Since the task and group structures are no longer allocated in the same space, the memory for group is allocated in the group_allocate() function, and no further allocation is needed during the task allocation process.
Signed-off-by: wangzhi16 <wangzhi16@xiaomi.com>
This reverts commit 29e50ffa73.
reason:
Placing the main thread and the gourd in the same memory block, and allocating and freeing memory simultaneously, presents the following two problems：
When the main thread creates a child thread and performs a detach operation, there is a possibility that the main thread may have exited, but the main thread's TCB (Transaction Control Block) may not have been released.
This could potentially cause the main thread's TCB to be double-freed. The core contradiction in this problem lies in binding the main thread's TCB (Trust Container Registry) and the group together. When releasing the main thread's TCB, an additional check is needed to ensure the main thread was the last to leave the group. If this check and the free operation are atomically guaranteed, the logic is sound, and double freeing won't occur. However, this atomicity cannot be completely guaranteed. If other free operations cause a block, problems still arise.
Signed-off-by: wangzhi16 <wangzhi16@xiaomi.com>
Most tools used for compliance and SBOM generation use SPDX identifiers
This change brings us a step closer to an easy SBOM generation.
Signed-off-by: Alin Jerpelea <alin.jerpelea@sony.com>
Two things need to be done when vfork'ing:
- Must attach to parent's address environment (the addrenv is shared)
- Must allocate a kernel stack (where would the register context go otherwise)
Note that this code assumes the address environment is shared, since we
don't support fork() which would _clone_ the address environment instead.
1. add support to join main task
| static pthread_t self;
|
| static void *join_task(void *arg)
| {
| int ret;
| ret = pthread_join(self, NULL); <--- /* Fix Task could not be joined */
| return NULL;
| }
|
| int main(int argc, char *argv[])
| {
| pthread_t thread;
|
| self = pthread_self();
|
| pthread_create(&thread, NULL, join_task, NULL);
| sleep(1);
|
| pthread_exit(NULL);
| return 0;
| }
2. Detach active thread will not alloc for additional join, just update the task flag.
3. Remove the return value waiting lock logic (data_sem),
the return value will be stored in the waiting tcb.
4. Revise the return value of pthread_join(), consistent with linux
e.g:
Joining a detached and canceled thread should return EINVAL, not ESRCH
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/pthread_join.html
[EINVAL]
The value specified by thread does not refer to a joinable thread.
NOTE:
This PR will not increase stack usage, but struct tcb_s will increase 32 bytes.
Signed-off-by: chao an <anchao@lixiang.com>
move task group into task_tcb_s to avoid access allocator to improve performance
for Task Termination, the time consumption will be reduced ~2us (Tricore TC397 300MHZ):
15.97(us) -> 13.55(us)
Signed-off-by: chao an <anchao@lixiang.com>
The maximum startup parameters have been checked accordingly in nxtask_setup_stackargs(),
let us save argument counter to avoid limit check.
Signed-off-by: chao an <anchao@lixiang.com>
The task files should consult the "spawn action" and "O_CLOEXEC flags"
to determine further whether the file should be duplicated.
This PR will further optimize file list duplicating to avoid the performance
regression caused by additional file operations.
Signed-off-by: chao an <anchao@xiaomi.com>
1. as we can use fork to implement vfork, so we rename the vfork to
fork, and use the fork method as the base to implement vfork method
2. create the vfork function as a libc function based on fork
function
Signed-off-by: guoshichao <guoshichao@xiaomi.com>
