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51488
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1 The collector supports both incremental collection and threads under
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2 Solaris 2. The incremental collector normally retrieves page dirty information
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3 through the appropriate /proc calls. But it can also be configured
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4 (by defining MPROTECT_VDB instead of PROC_VDB in gcconfig.h) to use mprotect
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5 and signals. This may result in shorter pause times, but it is no longer
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6 safe to issue arbitrary system calls that write to the heap.
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7
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8 Under other UNIX versions,
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9 the collector normally obtains memory through sbrk. There is some reason
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10 to expect that this is not safe if the client program also calls the system
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11 malloc, or especially realloc. The sbrk man page strongly suggests this is
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12 not safe: "Many library routines use malloc() internally, so use brk()
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13 and sbrk() only when you know that malloc() definitely will not be used by
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14 any library routine." This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since there
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15 seems to be no documentation as to which routines can transitively call malloc.
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16 Nonetheless, under Solaris2, the collector now (since 4.12) allocates
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17 memory using mmap by default. (It defines USE_MMAP in gcconfig.h.)
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18 You may want to reverse this decisions if you use -DREDIRECT_MALLOC=...
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19
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20
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21 SOLARIS THREADS:
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22
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23 The collector must be compiled with -DGC_SOLARIS_THREADS (thr_ functions)
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24 or -DGC_SOLARIS_PTHREADS (pthread_ functions) to be thread safe.
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25 It is also essential that gc.h be included in files that call thr_create,
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26 thr_join, thr_suspend, thr_continue, or dlopen. Gc.h macro defines
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27 these to also do GC bookkeeping, etc. Gc.h must be included with
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28 one or both of these macros defined, otherwise
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29 these replacements are not visible.
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30 A collector built in this way way only be used by programs that are
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31 linked with the threads library.
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32
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33 In this mode, the collector contains various workarounds for older Solaris
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34 bugs. Mostly, these should not be noticeable unless you look at system
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35 call traces. However, it cannot protect a guard page at the end of
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36 a thread stack. If you know that you will only be running Solaris2.5
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37 or later, it should be possible to fix this by compiling the collector
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38 with -DSOLARIS23_MPROTECT_BUG_FIXED.
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39
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40 Since 5.0 alpha5, dlopen disables collection temporarily,
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41 unless USE_PROC_FOR_LIBRARIES is defined. In some unlikely cases, this
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42 can result in unpleasant heap growth. But it seems better than the
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43 race/deadlock issues we had before.
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44
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45 If solaris_threads are used on an X86 processor with malloc redirected to
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46 GC_malloc, it is necessary to call GC_thr_init explicitly before forking the
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47 first thread. (This avoids a deadlock arising from calling GC_thr_init
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48 with the allocation lock held.)
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49
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50 It appears that there is a problem in using gc_cpp.h in conjunction with
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51 Solaris threads and Sun's C++ runtime. Apparently the overloaded new operator
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52 is invoked by some iostream initialization code before threads are correctly
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53 initialized. As a result, call to thr_self() in garbage collector
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54 initialization segfaults. Currently the only known workaround is to not
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55 invoke the garbage collector from a user defined global operator new, or to
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56 have it invoke the garbage-collector's allocators only after main has started.
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57 (Note that the latter requires a moderately expensive test in operator
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58 delete.)
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59
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60 Hans-J. Boehm
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61 (The above contains my personal opinions, which are probably not shared
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62 by anyone else.)
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