nuttx/sched/task/task_exit.c
Marco Casaroli a229e8b87e sched/arch/libc: give fork(), vfork() and task_fork() separate semantics
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 three 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.
  task_fork()  the historical behaviour under an honest name: shares memory,
               private stack copy, both running.  Non-POSIX, in sched.h.

Below libc there are now three syscalls -- up_task_fork(), up_vfork() and
up_fork().  The per-arch register snapshot is common to all three; each
architecture's entry points share one sequence and differ only in a
FORK_TYPE_* selector (include/nuttx/fork.h) handed to nxtask_setup_fork(),
which is the single place the memory semantics are decided.

The vfork() parent suspension moves out of libc into nxtask_start_vfork(),
released from nxsched_release_tcb().  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 queues it on g_pendingtasks -- and
the matching raw lockcount-- does not merge that list the way sched_unlock()
would, leaving the parent stranded with nothing left to move it off.  A
nxsched_merge_pending() after the decrement publishes it.  The call is a
no-op 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 on any configuration where no other task happens to call
sched_unlock() afterwards -- rv-virt:nsh64 and rv-virt:pnsh64, for instance,
where NSH is blocked in waitpid() holding the lock.

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.  Nothing is
lost in the meantime: task_fork() is that same sharing primitive under its
own name, and CONFIG_FORK_IS_TASK_FORK (default n) aliases fork() back to it
for legacy code, on exactly the configurations that had fork() before.

Kconfig: ARCH_HAVE_TASK_FORK and ARCH_HAVE_VFORK inherit 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
derives from the new ARCH_HAVE_ADDRENV_FORK.

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 task_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.

Signed-off-by: Marco Casaroli <marco.casaroli@gmail.com>

Assisted-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 16:39:07 +02:00

172 lines
5.2 KiB
C

/****************************************************************************
* sched/task/task_exit.c
*
* SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The
* ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
* "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the
* License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
* WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
* License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations
* under the License.
*
****************************************************************************/
/****************************************************************************
* Included Files
****************************************************************************/
#include <nuttx/config.h>
#include <sched.h>
#include <nuttx/debug.h>
#include <nuttx/sched_note.h>
#include "sched/sched.h"
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
# include "irq/irq.h"
#endif
#include "signal/signal.h"
#include "task/task.h"
/****************************************************************************
* Public Functions
****************************************************************************/
/****************************************************************************
* Name: nxtask_exit
*
* Description:
* This is a part of the logic used to implement _exit(). The full
* implementation of _exit() is architecture-dependent. The _exit()
* function also implements the bottom half of exit() and pthread_exit().
*
* This function causes the currently running task (i.e., the task at the
* head of the ready-to-run list) to cease to exist. This function should
* never be called from normal user code, but only from the architecture-
* specific implementation of exit.
*
* Threads/tasks could also be terminated via pthread_cancel,
* task_delete(), and task_restart(). In the last two cases, the
* task will be terminated as though exit() were called.
*
* Input Parameters:
* None
*
* Returned Value:
* OK on success; or ERROR on failure
*
* Assumptions:
* Executing within a critical section established by the caller.
*
****************************************************************************/
int nxtask_exit(void)
{
FAR struct tcb_s *dtcb;
FAR struct tcb_s *rtcb;
int ret;
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
/* Avoid using this_task() because it may assume a state that is not
* appropriate for an exiting task.
*/
dtcb = current_task(this_cpu());
#else
dtcb = this_task();
#endif
sinfo("%s pid=%d,TCB=%p\n", get_task_name(dtcb),
dtcb->pid, dtcb);
/* Remove the TCB of the current task from the ready-to-run list. A
* context switch will definitely be necessary -- that must be done
* by the architecture-specific logic.
*
* nxsched_remove_readytorun will mark the task at the head of the
* ready-to-run with state == TSTATE_TASK_RUNNING
*/
nxsched_remove_self(dtcb);
/* Get the new task at the head of the ready to run list */
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
rtcb = current_task(this_cpu());
#else
rtcb = this_task();
#endif
/* We are now in a bad state -- the head of the ready to run task list
* does not correspond to the thread that is running. Disabling pre-
* emption on this TCB and marking the new ready-to-run task as not
* running.
*
* We disable pre-emption here by directly incrementing the lockcount
* (vs. calling sched_lock()).
*/
rtcb->lockcount++;
rtcb->task_state = TSTATE_TASK_READYTORUN;
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
/* NOTE:
* During nxtask_terminate(), enter_critical_section() will be called
* to deallocate tcb. However, this would acquire g_cpu_irqlock if
* rtcb->irqcount = 0, event though we are in critical section.
* To prevent from acquiring, increment rtcb->irqcount here.
*/
rtcb->irqcount++;
#endif
dtcb->task_state = TSTATE_TASK_INACTIVE;
/* Update scheduler parameters.
*
* When the thread exits, SYS_restore_context is called to
* restore the context, which does not update the scheduling
* information.
* We need to update the scheduling information before tcb is released.
*/
nxsched_switch_context(dtcb, rtcb);
sched_note_stop(dtcb);
ret = nxsched_release_tcb(dtcb, dtcb->flags & TCB_FLAG_TTYPE_MASK);
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
rtcb->irqcount--;
#endif
rtcb->task_state = TSTATE_TASK_RUNNING;
/* Decrement the lockcount on rctb. */
rtcb->lockcount--;
#ifndef CONFIG_SMP
/* Publish anything woken while the TCB was being released. lockcount was
* raised directly rather than through sched_lock(), so the matching
* decrement above does not merge g_pendingtasks the way sched_unlock()
* would, and a vfork() parent released by nxsched_release_tcb() would be
* stranded there. SMP has no pending list to merge.
*/
nxsched_merge_pending();
#endif
return ret;
}