[Magick-bugs] Race condition in typical usage of DestroySemaphoreInfo

emagick at magic.ms emagick at magic.ms
Fri May 30 07:30:44 PDT 2008


Here's a typical usage of DestroySemaphoreInfo (as of ImageMagick
6.4.1-3):

  wand_semaphore=DestroySemaphoreInfo(wand_semaphore);

Unfortunately, there is a time window during which the variable
wand_semaphore is still non-NULL but the object pointed to no
longer exists causing problems if another thread happens to call
AcquireSemaphoreInfo.

I think a level of indirection to DestroySemaphoreInfo's
parameter should be added (instead of returning a pointer) and
NULL should be stored to the object pointed to by that parameter
while semaphore_mutex is still held.

I have seen crashes due to that problem. Just run

    for (;;)
      {
        MagickWand *wand = NewMagickWand ();
        DestroyMagickWand (wand);
      }

in two threads (without having other MagickWand objects allocated).

Fixing DestroySemaphoreInfo as described above isn't enough for making
this code work, I also had to extend the critical section over the
AcquireWandId function  (avoiding the double check pattern).


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