Re: [PATCH 0/1] Fix hang in t5562, introduced in v2.21.0-rc1

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:

> Unfortunately, subtest 13 still hangs on NonStop, even with this
> patch, so our Pipeline still hangs. I'm glad it's better on Azure,
> but I don't think this actually addresses the root cause of the
> hang.

Sigh.

> possible this is not the test that is failing, but actually the
> git-http-backend? The code is not in a loop, if that helps. It is
> not consuming any significant cycles. I don't know that part of
> the code at all, sadly. The code is here:
>
> * in the operating system from here up *
>   cleanup_children + 0x5D0 (UCr)
>   cleanup_children_on_exit + 0x70 (UCr)
>   git_atexit_dispatch + 0x200 (UCr)
>   __process_atexit_functions + 0xA0 (DLL zcredll)
>   CRE_TERMINATOR_ + 0xB50 (DLL zcredll)
>   exit + 0x2A0 (DLL zcrtldll)
>   die_webcgi + 0x240 (UCr)
>   die_errno + 0x360 (UCr)
>   write_or_die + 0x1C0 (UCr)
>   end_headers + 0x1A0 (UCr)
>   die_webcgi + 0x220 (UCr)
>   die + 0x320 (UCr)
>   inflate_request + 0x520 (UCr)
>   run_service + 0xC20 (UCr)
>   service_rpc + 0x530 (UCr)
>   cmd_main + 0xD00 (UCr)
>   main + 0x190 (UCr)
>
> Best guess is that a signal (SIGCHLD?) is possibly getting eaten
> or neglected somewhere between the test, perl, and
> git-http-backend.

So we are trying to die(), which actually happens in die_webcgi(),
and then try to write some message _but_ notice an error inside
write_or_dir() and try to exit because we do not want to recurse
forever trying to die, giving a message to say how/why we died, and
die because failing to give that message, forever.

But in our attempt to exit(), we try to "cleanup children" and that
is what gets stuck.

One big difference before and after the /dev/zero change is that the
process is now on a downstream of the pipe.  If we prepare a large
file with a finite size full of NULs and replace /dev/null with it,
instead of feeding NULs from the pipe, would it change the equation?