My semaphore module is not working properly(Dining philosopher) - linux

Question

I'm implementing a semaphore methods to understand synchronization and thread things.
By using my semaphore, I tried to solve the Dining Philosophers problem.
My plan was making deadlock situation first.
But I found that just only one philosopher eat repeatedly.
And I checked that my semaphore is working quite good by using other synchronization problems. I think there is some problem with grammar.
please let me know what is the problem.
Here is my code.
dinig.c (including main function)
#include "sem.h"
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
static tsem_t *chopstick[5];
static tsem_t *updating;
static int update_status (int i, int eating)
{
static int status[5] = { 0, };
static int duplicated;
int idx;
int sum;
tsem_wait (updating);
status[i] = eating;
/* Check invalid state. */
duplicated = 0;
sum = 0;
for (idx = 0; idx < 5; idx++)
{
sum += status[idx];
if (status[idx] && status[(idx + 1) % 5])
duplicated++;
}
/* Avoid printing empty table. */
if (sum == 0)
{
tsem_signal (updating);
return 0;
}
for (idx = 0; idx < 5; idx++)
fprintf (stdout, "%3s ", status[idx] ? "EAT" : "...");
/* Stop on invalid state. */
if (sum > 2 || duplicated > 0)
{
fprintf (stdout, "invalid %d (duplicated:%d)!\n", sum, duplicated);
exit (1);
}
else
fprintf (stdout, "\n");
tsem_signal (updating);
return 0;
}
void *thread_func (void *arg)
{
int i = (int) (long) arg;
int k = (i + 1) % 5;
do
{
tsem_wait (chopstick[i]);
tsem_wait (chopstick[k]);
update_status (i, 1);
update_status (i, 0);
tsem_signal (chopstick[i]);
tsem_signal (chopstick[k]);
}
while (1);
return NULL;
}
int main (int argc,
char **argv)
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 5; i++)
chopstick[i] = tsem_new (1);
updating = tsem_new (1);
for (i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
pthread_t tid;
pthread_create (&tid, NULL, thread_func, (void *) (long) i);
}
/* endless thinking and eating... */
while (1)
usleep (10000000);
return 0;
}
sem.c(including semaphore methods)
#include "sem.h"
.
sem.h(Header for sem.c)
#ifndef __SEM_H__
#define __SEM_H__
#include <pthread.h>
typedef struct test_semaphore tsem_t;
tsem_t *tsem_new (int value);
void tsem_free (tsem_t *sem);
void tsem_wait (tsem_t *sem);
int tsem_try_wait (tsem_t *sem);
void tsem_signal (tsem_t *sem);
#endif /* __SEM_H__ */
compile command
gcc sem.c dining.c -pthread -o dining

Answer 1

One problem is that in tsem_wait() you have the following code sequence outside of a lock:
while(sem->count <= 0)
continue;
There's no guarantee that the program will actually re-read sem->count - the compiler is free to produce machine code that does something like the following:
int temp = sem->count;
while(temp <= 0)
continue;
In fact, this will likely happen in an optimized build.
Try changing your busy wait loop to something like this so the count is checked while holding the lock:
void tsem_wait (tsem_t *sem)
{
pthread_mutex_lock(&(sem->mutexLock));
while (sem->count <= 0) {
pthread_mutex_unlock(&(sem->mutexLock));
usleep(1);
pthread_mutex_lock(&(sem->mutexLock));
}
// sem->mutexLock is still held here...
sem->count--;
pthread_mutex_unlock(&(sem->mutexLock));
}
Strictly speaking, you should do something similar for tsem_try_wait() (which you're not using yet).
Note that you might want to consider using a pthread_cond_t to make waiting on the counter changing more efficient.
Finally, your code to 'get' the chopsticks in thread_func() has the classic Dining Philosopher deadlock problem in the situation where each philosopher simultaneously acquires the 'left' chopstick (chopstick[i]) and ends up waiting forever to get the 'right' chopstick (chopstick[k]) since all the chopsticks are in some philosopher's left hand.