Libc path rewriting is not working for fork()ed processes

[Yuri Dario]

Use of the klibccfg pathrewriter dll works only for main process: child forked processes can use only predefined libc rewriting rules (e.g. /@tmpdir).

This could be a dll init fault.

Sample testcase:

#include <sys/stat.h>

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

//#define DIR "/@tmpdir"
#define DIR "/$e/dati/yuri"

void test_dir( void)
{
   int ret;
   struct stat st;

   printf( "%d test dir\n", getpid());
   ret = stat( DIR, &st);
   if (ret != 0) {
	printf( "%d test dir failed\n", getpid());
	return;
   }
   printf( "%d test dir ok\n", getpid());
}


void test( void)
{
   FILE* f;

   printf( "%d test file\n", getpid());
   f = fopen( DIR "/fax.odt", "rb");
   if (f == NULL) {
	   printf( "%d test file failed\n", getpid());
	return;
   }
   fclose(f);
   printf( "%d test file OK\n", getpid());
}

void main( void)
{
   printf( "pid %d\n", getpid());

   fork();

   test();
   test_dir();

}

[Yuri Dario]

Further tests with a debug version of the rewriter dll, shows that hook function is called only once for parent process.

So I think the bug is in libc, which does not initialize hooks in forked processes.

[bird]

The reason why this is still broken (I believe I tried to fix it once already) is that the DLL is not fork() friendly and comes with its own heap. The rewrite rules are all installed after fork(), but they seems to be pointing to uninitialized/zero memory (probably in the heap block of that hook DLL).

The best idea here, if this is still considered relevant, is to split the klibccfg.dll into a WPS and a kLibC-hook dll. Continue building the WPS one with VAC or whatever, but build the hook dll with gcc (making sure forking is enabled). Apart from fixing the problem of this defect, this will also avoid dragging SOM, WPS and (maybe) PM dependencies into console applications that are using kLibC. It will also save memory by dispensing with the unnecessary VAC/whatever heap.