Deadlocks Related to Scheduling

Because there is no guaranteed order in which locks are acquired, a problem in threaded programs is that a particular thread never acquires a lock, even though it seems that it should.

This usually happens when the thread that holds the lock releases it, lets a small amount of time pass, and then reacquires it. Because the lock was released, it might seem that the other thread should acquire the lock. But, because nothing blocks the thread holding the lock, it continues to run from the time it releases the lock until it reacquires the lock, and so no other thread is run.

You can usually solve this type of problem by calling thr_yield(3T) just before the call to reacquire the lock. This allows other threads to run and to acquire the lock.

Because the time-slice requirements of applications are so variable, the threads library does not impose any. Use calls to thr_yield() to make threads share time as you require.