Re: sort --parallel problem?

[Jim Meyering]

Roman Rybalko wrote:

> Jim Meyering wrote:
>
>     Dmitry Sivachenko wrote:
>
>         I am using coreutils-8.12 on FreeBSD-7.2 (compiled from FreeBSD 
> ports).
>         When I use --parallel option, I frequently (not always, but often) get
>         the following error:
>         Fatal error 'mutex is on list' at line XXX in file
>         /usr/src/lib/libthr/thread/thr_mutex.c (errno = 0)
>         and sort aborts.
>         Is it a known issue?
>
>     This is the first I've heard of that problem
>
>         Is it FreeBSD-specific?
>
>     Could be.
>
> Sometimes happens for me, but with different tools, my own particularly.
> Seems FreeBSD's pthread_mutex_init does not clear the memory, and then may be
> possible situation when random mutex data interfere with internal lists.
> memset(&mutex, 0, sizeof(mutex)) before pthread_mutex_init fixes the problem 
> for
> me.
> Using FreeBSD-8.x

Thanks for the suggestion.
Do you know of a way to test for this bug?
With that, we should be able to write a gnulib
module that would transparently replace
pthread_mutex_init with a version that works around the flaw.