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ThreadSanitizer (TSan) v. 2

ThreadSanitizer v2 is a synchronization error detector based on compiler instrumentation. It is also capable of detecting other threading errors like deadlocks, unjoined threads, destroying locked mutexes, use of async-signal unsafe code in signal handlers, and others.

You may have heard of the old Valgrind-based version of ThreadSanitizer, but TSan v2 has a brand new state machine and has nothing to do with Valgrind. The old ThreadSanitizer is deprecated in Chromium.

ThreadSanitizer v2 is only supported on Linux so far.

Building Chromium with ThreadSanitizer

Set up a GN build by typing gn gen out/tsan && gn args out/tsan (use a directory name of your choice). Enter these variables in the resulting editor:

is_tsan = true

enable_nacl = false

is_debug = false

Then build like normal with ninja -C out/tsan base_unittests

Note: TSan builds with libc++ by default (the use_custom_libcxx=1 GYP flag). If your tests fail under TSan, make sure you're not relying on some unspecified libstdc++ behavior.

export TSAN_OPTIONS="external_symbolizer_path=third_party/llvm-build/Release+Asserts/bin/llvm-symbolizer"

out/Release/base_unittests --no-sandbox 2>&1 | tee log

Running Chrome may require additional options:

TSAN_OPTIONS="atexit_sleep_ms=200 flush_memory_ms=2000 $TSAN_OPTIONS" out/Release/chrome --no-sandbox 2>&1 | tee log

atexit_sleep_ms is 1 second by default. Some tests waiting for child processes may fail with such a big timeout.

Tests with big memory footprint may hang your machine, so you need to flush periodically (flush_memory_ms) and skip heavy tests (like OOM)

flush_memory_ms may lead to false negatives, thus the flushing period should be chosen carefully.

If TSan fails to restore one of the stacks, try adding history_size=7 to TSAN_OPTIONS (the amount of memory reserved for the stacks is proportional to 2^history_size, 7 is the maximum value).

Note: --no-sandbox is essential if you're running Chrome or tests that invoke Chrome (browser_tests, content_browsertests etc.).

Note 2: due to http://crbug.com/341805 you may need to run Chrome with --disable-gpu or use xvfb-run.

Note 3: running the test multiple times in a row (--gtest_repeat=5) may increase the reproducibility of the races.

Note 4: the following env variables control the behavior of libnss and libglib. Setting them is optional in most cases, but may help if you're seeing strange reports in the library code:

export G_SLICE=always-malloc

export NSS_DISABLE_ARENA_FREE_LIST=1

export NSS_DISABLE_UNLOAD=1

Note 5: As of November 2018, the commands above don't symbolize the stack trace. Pipe the output through the ASAN symbolize script, e.g.:

out/Release/base_unittests --no-sandbox 2>&1 | tools/valgrind/asan/asan_symbolize.py

Disabling tests

Unlike Valgrind, ThreadSanitizer v2 doesn't support gtest filter files. Instead of adding a test name to a blocklist you should disable the test in the code under #if defined(THREAD_SANITIZER).

Suppressing race reports

The default ThreadSanitizer v2 suppressions reside in build/sanitizers/tsan_suppressions.cc and are automatically linked to every executable in Chromium.

You can supply additional suppressions by adding suppressions=/path/to/suppressions.txt to TSAN_OPTIONS.

The examples below refer to plain-text suppressions files, the format of tsan_suppressions.cc is almost the same.

ThreadSanitizer data race report contains two or more stack traces of conflicting memory accesses (the topmost access is the last one) together with the thread IDs and the acquired mutexes.

For a global variable involved its name is printed, stack or heap memory locations are described using the allocation stack trace.

When applicable, the stack traces of thread creations and mutex acquisitions are also listed.

WARNING: ThreadSanitizer: data race (pid=22215)
  Write of size 4 at 0x7f8a8f1d99ec by thread T11:
    #0 New v8/src/zone-inl.h:66 (content_browsertests+0x000001568815)
    #1 zone v8/src/zone-inl.h:98 (content_browsertests+0x000001568815)
    #2 v8::internal::Parser::ParseLazy(v8::internal::Utf16CharacterStream*, v8::internal::ZoneScope*) v8/src/parser.cc:743 (content_browsertests+0x000001568815)
  Previous write of size 4 at 0x7f8a8f1d99ec by thread T8:
    #0 New v8/src/zone-inl.h:66 (content_browsertests+0x0000013e5568)
    #1 zone v8/src/zone-inl.h:98 (content_browsertests+0x0000013e5568)
    #2 v8::internal::HGraphBuilder::CreateGraph() v8/src/hydrogen.cc:951 (content_browsertests+0x0000013e5568)
    #3 DoGenerateCode<v8::internal::FastCloneShallowArrayStub> v8/src/code-stubs-hydrogen.cc:288 (content_browsertests+0x0000012cb218)
    #4 v8::internal::FastCloneShallowArrayStub::GenerateCode() v8/src/code-stubs-hydrogen.cc:355

  Location is global 'v8::internal::Zone::allocation_size_' of size 4 at 7f8a8f1d99ec (content_browsertests+0x0000063c69ec)

Each suppression is a one line of the form "suppression_type:pattern". The most common suppression type is "race", see https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/ThreadSanitizerSuppressions for other suppression types.

The pattern is matched against:

function name/file name/module of each frame in the stack trace of each conflicting memory access
global variable name (if present)

The pattern may contain the wildcard ('*') symbol which matches any substring. '*' is automatically prepended to each pattern unless it starts with '^'. '*' is automatically appended to each pattern unless it ends with '$'.

Good suppressions match a single race report (or a number of reports with a common root cause), but are unlikely to mask further races in other components.

A suppression must be preceded by a comment (started with a "#") with a crbug link.

Examples of good suppressions for the above race report:

# Suppresses other races in zone-inl.h as well.
race:v8/src/zone-inl.h
# Effectively the same as "v8/src/zone", but more verbose.
race:v8/src/zone*
# You can also suppress globals.
race:v8::internal::Zone::allocation_size_
# Ok, but won't match calls to zone() from other places.
race:FastCloneShallowArrayStub::GenerateCode

Examples of bad suppressions:

# Watch out - may match other functions called "New".
race:^New$
# Function arguments may change over time, better omit them.
race:v8::internal::Parser::ParseLazy(v8::internal::Utf16CharacterStream*, v8::internal::ZoneScope*)
# Same as "*New*", which will match a ton of other functions.
race:New
# Will suppress everything in content_browsertests.
race:content_browsertests
# Too generic.
race:base::MessageLoop::Run

More info on the suppressions format is available at https://code.google.com/p/thread-sanitizer/wiki/Suppressions.

The possible suppression prefixes are: "race:" (for data races and use-after-free reports), "thread:" (for thread leaks), "mutex:", "signal:", "deadlock:" (for lock-order-inversion reports).

You can also disable interceptors in a particular library using the "called_from_lib:libfoo.so" suppression prefix.

Reproducing race reports in tests

Before trying to reproduce a race report in a Chromium test, make sure they are not suppressed or ignored.

Suppressions from build/sanitizers/tsan_suppressions.cc (as well as those passed via TSAN_OPTIONS) are applied at program runtime. If the race report matches a line in the suppressions file, TSan does not print that report.

Ignores from tools/memory/tsan_v2/ignores.txt are applied at compile time. If the function name matches a "fun:" line in the ignores file, TSan does not instrument that function, effectively ignoring all memory accesses (but not synchronization) in that function. If the source file name matches an "src:" line, every function in that file is ignored. Note that the tests do not depend on ignores.txt, so you need to touch all the affected source files manually before rebuilding (or make a clean build) after any change to ignores.txt.

Debugging with GDB

You can't execute an instrumented binary from GDB, because it maps something in the place where TSan needs to map its shadow:

FATAL: ThreadSanitizer can not mmap the shadow memory (something is mapped at 0x555555554000 < 0x7cf000000000)

However you can attach GDB to a running TSan process. If you have troubles catching a particular process, try to run with TSAN_OPTIONS=stop_on_start=1.

Every subprocess will print the following line:

ThreadSanitizer is suspended at startup (pid 20492). Call __tsan_resume().

In order to proceed, you'll have to run gdb -p 20492 and type call __tsan_resume().