[Zope-dev] Segfault and Deadlock

[alangmead at boston.com]

Dieter Maurer <dieter at handshake.de> wrote on 05/02/2004 01:28:48 PM:

> Willi Langenberger wrote at 2004-5-2 17:10 +0200:
>
> What is "NPTL"?

It stands for "Native POSIX Thread Library" It is a new threads subsystem
that is included in Linux 2.6 that Red Hat has backported into their 2.4
kernels. It has some performance advantages and has more correct POSIX
behavior (especially in terms of signal handling.) over the older
LinuxThreads system.

>
> >...
> >PS: A RedHat-9 system (kernel 2.4.20, with NPTL) shows a different
> >behaviour. After the segfault, all threads disappeared. So maybe
> >all is ok with NPTL, but i've not tested it yet...
>
> That is the good behaviour. Thus, we only have to learn
> how we can get "NPTL" for all Linux systems.
>

The choices seem to be to use a Linux 2.6 kernel, or to use a Red Hat 2.4
kernel with NPTL backported into it. (the earliest releases of Red Hat 9
had problems, but they seem to have been fixed in later kernel and  glibc
updates.)

The older LinuxThreads library has a non-standard threading function
pthread_kill_other_threads_np  that can be used as a workaround to notify
other threads of termination.