Using LWPs Between Processes

Using locks and condition variables between processes does not require using the threads library. The recommended approach is to use the threads library interfaces, but when this is not desirable, then the _lwp_mutex_* and _lwp_cond_* interfaces can be used as follows:

1. Allocate the locks and condition variables as usual in shared memory (either with shmop(2) or mmap(2)).

2. Then initialize the newly allocated objects appropriately with the USYNC_PROCESS type. Because no interface is available to perform the initialization (_lwp_mutex_init(2) and _lwp_cond_init(2) do not exist), the objects can be initialized using statically allocated and initialized dummy objects.

For example, to initialize lockp:

	lwp_mutex_t *lwp_lockp;
	lwp_mutex_t dummy_shared_mutex = SHAREDMUTEX;
		/* SHAREDMUTEX is defined in /usr/include/synch.h */
	...
	...
	lwp_lockp = alloc_shared_lock();
	*lwp_lockp = dummy_shared_mutex;

Similarly, for condition variables:

	lwp_cond_t *lwp_condp;
	lwp_cond_t dummy_shared_cv = SHAREDCV;
		/* SHAREDCV is defined in /usr/include/synch.h */
	...
	...
	lwp_condp = alloc_shared_cv();
	*lwp_condp = dummy_shared_cv;