[Python-Dev] Re: mysterious hangs in socket code

[Mats Wichmann]

 >> One possibility is that the Linux getaddrinfo() is thread-safe, but
 >> only by way of a lock that only allows one request to be outstanding
 >> at a time.
 >
 >The next step should be to get the getaddrinfo() source code from
 >glibc and see what it does.  It's open source, hey. :-)

I can dig around a bit, but I have to figure out what
I'm looking for.

On the failure platform, are we sure Python is using
the native getaddrinfo, not the Python-supplied one?
I've had some fun (not) with the latter; for working
on an LSB-conforming version of Python, I can't let it
use the glibc version of getaddrinfo because it's not
in the spec (will be in the next version); but the Python
addrinfo.h header has some fields in different order
than the Linux one, and it managed to call the Linux
one anyway.  The result of that was not subtle, however :-)
so I don't think that's the problem that started this
thread.

I do know the Linux (or rather, glibc) getaddrinfo doesn't
get rentrancy through magic, it calls gethostbyname_r
and gethostbyaddr_r. (Note the Python emulation getaddrinfo
just calls the straight gethostbyname and gethostbyaddr
routines and so is likely not to be reentrant).