1606813 - ThreadSanitizer: data race [@ ssl_Poll] vs. [@ ssl_DefSend] and related

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Christian Holler (:decoder)]

The attached crash information was detected while running CI tests with ThreadSanitizer on mozilla-central revision d1ac49b9eb3e.

I'm seeing a whole group of races in Networking/NSS that all have in common that they race on some flag of the TLS socket. For the race attached, this is the ss->lastWriteBlocked member, another I've seen is ss->firstHsDone ([@ ssl_SecureSend] vs. [@ ssl_FinishHandshake]). And it's always the main thread vs. socket thread.

Are these races expected?

General information about TSan reports

Why fix races?

Data races are undefined behavior and can cause crashes as well as correctness issues. Compiler optimizations can cause racy code to have unpredictable and hard-to-reproduce behavior.

Rating

If you think this race can cause crashes or correctness issues, it would be great to rate the bug appropriately as P1/P2 and/or indicating this in the bug. This makes it a lot easier for us to assess the actual impact that these reports make and if they are helpful to you.

False Positives / Benign Races

Typically, races reported by TSan are not false positives [1], but it is possible that the race is benign. Even in this case it would be nice to come up with a fix if it is easily doable and does not regress performance. Every race that we cannot fix will have to remain on the suppression list and slows down the overall TSan performance. Also note that seemingly benign races can possibly be harmful (also depending on the compiler, optimizations and the architecture) [2][3].

[1] One major exception is the involvement of uninstrumented code from third-party libraries.
[2] http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/01/06/benign-data-races-what-could-possibly-go-wrong
[3] How to miscompile programs with "benign" data races: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotpar11/tech/final_files/Boehm.pdf

Suppressing unfixable races

If the bug cannot be fixed, then a runtime suppression needs to be added in mozglue/build/TsanOptions.cpp. The suppressions match on the full stack, so it should be picked such that it is unique to this particular race. The bug number of this bug should also be included so we have some documentation on why this suppression was added.

Comment 1

[Christian Holler (:decoder)]

Attachment: Detailed Crash Information

Comment 2

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Can you provide a test case or STR or at least outline what code you have been testing? This smells like a DOM or at least JS exposed secure TLS socket use.

Comment 3

[Christian Holler (:decoder)]

(In reply to Honza Bambas (:mayhemer) from comment #2)

Can you provide a test case or STR or at least outline what code you have been testing? This smells like a DOM or at least JS exposed secure TLS socket use.

Sorry for the slow response here. The failing test that causes this is dom/presentation/tests/xpcshell/test_tcp_control_channel.js.

See also: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=9177cc2d47dff729d064b2e09ab69f6c4168db2c&selectedJob=287720523

Let me know if anything else is required.

Comment 4

[Kershaw Chang [:kershaw]]

I'd suggest to just disable test_tcp_control_channel.js for tsan, since presentation api is not used and no one is maintaining the code in dom/presentation right now.

Comment 5

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Agree with Kershaw on this one.

Comment 6

[Christian Holler (:decoder)]

Attachment: Bug 1606813 - Disable broken test_tcp_control_channel.js. r?kershaw

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/362056ef4108
Disable broken test_tcp_control_channel.js. r=kershaw

Comment 8

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/362056ef4108