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This is an additional variation of the general Wait Chain pattern where mutexes (mutants) are involved in thread wait chains, for example:

THREAD fffffa8019388b60  Cid 02e8.cfd0  Teb: 000007fffffa2000 Win32Thread: 0000000000000000 WAIT: (UserRequest) UserMode Non-Alertable
    fffffa800d75daf0  Mutant - owning thread fffffa800ea2ab60
[...]

THREAD fffffa8016abab60  Cid 02e8.ec34  Teb: 000007fffffae000 Win32Thread: 0000000000000000 WAIT: (UserRequest) UserMode Non-Alertable
    fffffa800d75daf0  Mutant - owning thread fffffa800ea2ab60
[...]

We have seen such dependencies in various previous pattern interaction case studies such as:

- Inconsistent dump, stack trace collection, LPC, thread, process, executive resource wait chains, missing threads and waiting thread time

- Inconsistent dump, blocked threads, wait chains, incorrect stack trace and process factory

- Semantic Split pattern example

- Insufficient memory, handle leak, wait chain, deadlock, inconsistent dump and overaged system

- Blocked GUI thread, wait chain and virtualized process

- LPC/ALPC Wait Chain pattern example

- Mixed object Deadlock pattern example

- LPC Deadlock pattern example

Another example I show here is an unusual number of mutant dependencies in one complete memory dump from hang system:

AppA(KTHREAD-1)  -> AppB(KTHREAD-2)
AppB(KTHREAD-3)  -> ServiceA(KTHREAD-4)     
AppA(KTHREAD-5)  -> ServiceA(KTHREAD-4)
AppB(KTHREAD-6)  -> AppA(KTHREAD-7)
AppB(KTHREAD-6)  -> AppC(KTHREAD-8)
AppC(KTHREAD-9)  -> ServiceA(KTHREAD-4)
AppC(KTHREAD-10) -> AppB(KTHREAD-11)

Here the notation AppX(N)->AppY(M) means that a thread N from AppX process is waiting for a mutant that is owned by a thread M from AppY process. Because AppB, AppC and ServiceA belonged to the Same Vendor it was advised to check with that ISV.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Crash Dump Analysis, Crash Dump Patterns, Debugging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.