On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:40:29 +0300, Dmitry Goncharov <dgoncharov@unison.com> wrote:
Even in this situation you can do something. After a thread (or a process) which holds a mutex locked gets killed any attempt to unlock the mutex will (and should) fail with EPERM. To resume using the mutex you can initialize it again. In other words, you can invoke pthread_mutex_init() on this mutex. This will unlock the mutex for you. This is sort of a dirty trick. If a thread had a mutex locked when it was killed it is very likely that the data (that the mutex protects) is in some inconsistent state. So, besides unlocking the mutex (by the means of pthread_mutex_init()) you also have to restore the data.
Yes, if you know that the mutex is abandoned in the first place, which requires robust mutexes, if I understood correctly. I think that there is no Windows specific implementation of interprocess mutex. This could be useful since the API guarantees you to return WAIT_ABANDONED when you wait on a mutex in this case. It's not a lot of work, I offer my help if needed. -- EA