libsmbclient - Thread Saftey

[David Collier-Brown]

   I did a check for MT-safe versus merely async-signal-safe functions in
the samba4 libsmbclient, and found a number that need attention:

1) The MT-safe (or unsafe!) ones were:

atof - convert string to double-precision number
     MT-Level: MT-Safe as  long  as setlocale(3C) is not
     called to change the locale.

Found in:
"./libsmbclient.c",
       4697:     
       4730: 

ctime - convert date and time to string
     MT-Level: MT-Safe , but note that the 
     return values  for  asctime(),  ctime(),  gmtime(),  and
     localtime()  point  to thread-specific data whose content is
     overwritten by each call by the same thread.

Found in:
"./libsmbclient.c",
       4044:     
       4050:     

getpass - read a string of characters without echo
     MT-Level: MT-Unsafe
	This one needs a buffer and a semaphore to protect it,
	and make it, in effect, a getpass_r 

Found in:
"./clidfs.c",
       203:     

inet_ntoa - Internet address manipulation
     MT-Level: MT-Unsafe, static buffer is overwritten on
     each call. Linux and Solaris *may* make this per-thread
     of the compiler is told to generate MT code...

Found in:
"./namequery.c",
       716:     
       723:     
       1083:     
"./nmblib.c",
       112:     
       802:     
       824:     
       839:     

readdir - read directory
     The  readdir() function is unsafe in
     multithreaded applications.  The  readdir_r() function is safe, and
     should be used instead. 

Found in:
"./libsmb_compat.c",
       256:   


2) The merely Async-Signal-Safe ones follow: as the change something external,
two competing threads can fight over the results. If you really need to 
protect these, you need a semaphore that's visible to all callers of the 
library.  In general, that's too much work for too little value (;-))

chmod - change access permission mode of file
close - close a file descriptor
creat - create a new file or rewrite an existing one
fstat - get file status
geteuid - get real user, effective user, real group, and effective group IDs
getuid - get real user, effective user, real group, and effective group IDs
kill - send a signal to a process or a group of processes
lseek - move read/write file pointer
mkdir - make a directory
open - open a file
read - read from file
rename - change the name of a file
rmdir - remove a directory
stat - get file status
time - get time
unlink - remove directory entry
write - write on a file

--dave




Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 10:46:14AM -0400, Derrell Lipman wrote:
> 
>>On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Pane, Chris <cpane at vanteon.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have been using libsmbclient to do some smb share browsing in an
>>>application. I have read that it is currently not thread safe in samba-3.x.
>>>Anyone know if there are plans for it to be made thread-safe in samba4?
>>
>>
>>Hi Chris,
>>
>>I believe I've eliminated all non-thread-safe issues from within
>>libsmbclient itself (although that will require a thorough inspection to
>>confirm), but the core functions within samba that libsmbclient calls have
>>not been thread-safe.  Samba4 interfaces are, I think, inherently
>>thread-safe.  Therefore, although no work has begun yet on creating a samba4
>>version of libsmbclient (and it's not yet scheduled), I don't believe
>>there's any reason why a samba4 libsmbclient can't or won't be thread-safe.
> 
> 
> The easiest thing to do at the moment is wrap the libsmbclient
> functions in a mutex. I'm looking at making the underlying
> functions thread safe, but that's a longer term job.
> 
> Jeremy.
> 

-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb at spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain
(416) 223-5943