aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/gc/doc/README.solaris2
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorAkinori Ito <aito@eie.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp>2001-11-15 00:32:13 +0000
committerAkinori Ito <aito@eie.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp>2001-11-15 00:32:13 +0000
commit85da7ee692072c643939e9f4b24fbd1e74e64e70 (patch)
tree9fc63298cf968fa560a9e3cf9b6c84516032fca8 /gc/doc/README.solaris2
parentUpdates from 0.2.1 into 0.2.1-inu-1.5 (diff)
downloadw3m-85da7ee692072c643939e9f4b24fbd1e74e64e70.tar.gz
w3m-85da7ee692072c643939e9f4b24fbd1e74e64e70.zip
Update to w3m-0.2.1-inu-1.6.
Diffstat (limited to '')
-rw-r--r--gc/doc/README.solaris262
1 files changed, 62 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/gc/doc/README.solaris2 b/gc/doc/README.solaris2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ed61dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gc/doc/README.solaris2
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+The collector supports both incremental collection and threads under
+Solaris 2. The incremental collector normally retrieves page dirty information
+through the appropriate /proc calls. But it can also be configured
+(by defining MPROTECT_VDB instead of PROC_VDB in gcconfig.h) to use mprotect
+and signals. This may result in shorter pause times, but it is no longer
+safe to issue arbitrary system calls that write to the heap.
+
+Under other UNIX versions,
+the collector normally obtains memory through sbrk. There is some reason
+to expect that this is not safe if the client program also calls the system
+malloc, or especially realloc. The sbrk man page strongly suggests this is
+not safe: "Many library routines use malloc() internally, so use brk()
+and sbrk() only when you know that malloc() definitely will not be used by
+any library routine." This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since there
+seems to be no documentation as to which routines can transitively call malloc.
+Nonetheless, under Solaris2, the collector now (since 4.12) allocates
+memory using mmap by default. (It defines USE_MMAP in gcconfig.h.)
+You may want to reverse this decisions if you use -DREDIRECT_MALLOC=...
+
+
+SOLARIS THREADS:
+
+The collector must be compiled with -DGC_SOLARIS_THREADS (thr_ functions)
+or -DGC_SOLARIS_PTHREADS (pthread_ functions) to be thread safe.
+It is also essential that gc.h be included in files that call thr_create,
+thr_join, thr_suspend, thr_continue, or dlopen. Gc.h macro defines
+these to also do GC bookkeeping, etc. Gc.h must be included with
+one or both of these macros defined, otherwise
+these replacements are not visible.
+A collector built in this way way only be used by programs that are
+linked with the threads library.
+
+In this mode, the collector contains various workarounds for older Solaris
+bugs. Mostly, these should not be noticeable unless you look at system
+call traces. However, it cannot protect a guard page at the end of
+a thread stack. If you know that you will only be running Solaris2.5
+or later, it should be possible to fix this by compiling the collector
+with -DSOLARIS23_MPROTECT_BUG_FIXED.
+
+Since 5.0 alpha5, dlopen disables collection temporarily,
+unless USE_PROC_FOR_LIBRARIES is defined. In some unlikely cases, this
+can result in unpleasant heap growth. But it seems better than the
+race/deadlock issues we had before.
+
+If solaris_threads are used on an X86 processor with malloc redirected to
+GC_malloc, it is necessary to call GC_thr_init explicitly before forking the
+first thread. (This avoids a deadlock arising from calling GC_thr_init
+with the allocation lock held.)
+
+It appears that there is a problem in using gc_cpp.h in conjunction with
+Solaris threads and Sun's C++ runtime. Apparently the overloaded new operator
+is invoked by some iostream initialization code before threads are correctly
+initialized. As a result, call to thr_self() in garbage collector
+initialization segfaults. Currently the only known workaround is to not
+invoke the garbage collector from a user defined global operator new, or to
+have it invoke the garbage-collector's allocators only after main has started.
+(Note that the latter requires a moderately expensive test in operator
+delete.)
+
+Hans-J. Boehm
+(The above contains my personal opinions, which are probably not shared
+by anyone else.)