Re: [Xen-devel] pthread_mutex_lock() and Xenstored

[Vincent Hanquez <vincent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 01:51:18PM +0800, Peter Teoh wrote:
> pthread_mutex_lock() are not async-signal safe (ref:
> http://www.gelato.org/pdf/Illinois/gelato_IL2004_libatomic_boehm.pdf)
> but I still see that it is used extensively in xenstored
> implementation (eg, xs.c).

xs is the client part of the xenstore protocol. it's not used in
xenstored (the daemon).

> Moreover, pthread_mutex_lock() suffered a higher performance penalty
> than other synchronization option.   For a one-time effort like domain
> creation this is ok, but Xenstore is used repeatedly to access data,
> and therefore performance could potentially be enhanced.
>
> Does all these sound logical?

Not really. xenstored is single threaded and has a file-backed-storage
anyway, so most of the time you're going to wait for that.

I expect the pthread_mutex_lock to be insignificant compared to the time
waiting for xenstored to reply. Also the xs interface is not meant to be
use massively in parallel.

Cheers,
-- 
Vincent Hanquez

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