Detection of Concurrency Errors in Multithreaded Applications Based on Static Source Code Analysis

Abstract

Computer systems that allow multithreaded execution of applications have become extremely common, even small portable devices operate in multithreaded mode. This is undoubtedly very convenient for users, but for programmers it is associated with many unwanted errors, which can occur after writing application code. These errors include race condition, deadlock, atomicity violation and order violation. The subject of this work is related to the detection of these errors in the process of static software analysis. The paper presents the author's model, which was then used to detect the above-mentioned occurrences, additionally each error has been discussed in detail. A tool supporting the detection of errors in multithreaded applications was also developed and the results of this tool were presented.

Repair of Multithreaded Errors in the Control and Measurement System

“…This tool is in the early stages of development and only allows detection of race condition. The second tool is rdao detector [10], which is developed based on the Multithreaded Application Source Code Model. Rdao detector makes it possible to locate data races and deadlock errors in the process of static source code analysis of programs written in C using the phtread library.…”

“…Other tools have significant limitations of detecting a single class of errors or are in the early stages of development. A comparison of multiple tools can be found in [10].…”

“…The case of the control and measurement system presented in this paper, served as a case study to verify the MASCM method and rdao detector tool described in detail in [10]. Multithreaded application source code model allows for the mapping of a multithreaded computer program in the form of a tuple:…”

“…Incorrect operation of a server program results from incorrect use of mutual exclusion mechanisms, commonly called mutex. In the case of data race errors, the cause of their occurrence is the failure to create a critical section, which should include operations on shared resources and operations in order relations with them [10,11]. Deadlock, on the other hand, is caused by mutually exclusive pairs of mutexes, a retry to establish an already established mutex, or a missed mutex release operation [10,12].…”

“…In the depicted fragment of the graphical representation, it is easy to locate a path in the graph in which there is a second operation of establishing a mutex without first releasing it. In other words, the condition that causes the deadlock error [10] is met. For order violation class errors, the situation is much more complicated.…”