boost::thread_v2::upgrade_mutex corrupted when thread is interrupted

When a thread tries to obtain an exclusive lock on a boost::thread_v2::upgrade_mutex and is interrupted while waiting for all readers to finish, the mutex is left in a locked state. In turn, no other thread is able to lock the mutex again. The "owning" thread is unaware of this, as the function lock() returned with an exception.

While interruptions are one way of leading to this problem, it might actually be a more general issue of exception safety.

While this mutex implementation seems to be not used much, it is the workaround for the writer starvation issue of the default mutex implementation on Linux.

It seems like the default mutex implementation disables interruptions while trying to aquire the lock. I don't know if that is enough or if other exceptions might occur as well.

Example code how to reproduce:

#define BOOST_THREAD_V2_SHARED_MUTEX
#include <boost/thread.hpp>

using mutex_t = boost::shared_mutex;
using shared_lock_t = boost::shared_lock<boost::shared_mutex>;
using unique_lock_t = boost::unique_lock<boost::shared_mutex>;

int main(int, char**) {
    mutex_t mut;
    boost::barrier readerReady(2), readerDone(2);

    auto t1 = boost::thread([&]() {
        shared_lock_t guard(mut);
        readerReady.wait();
        readerDone.wait();
    });

    readerReady.wait();

    auto t2 = boost::thread([&]() {
        unique_lock_t guard(mut);
    });

    boost::this_thread::sleep_for(boost::chrono::seconds(2));

    t2.interrupt();
    t2.join();

    readerDone.wait();
    t1.join();

    BOOST_ASSERT(mut.try_lock());

    return 0;
}

Please note that the example does not terminate when BOOST_THREAD_V2_SHARED_MUTEX is not defined. It then hangs in t2.join(), as t2 has disabled interruptions when acquiring a lock.

boostorg / thread

boost::thread_v2::upgrade_mutex corrupted when thread is interrupted #373