Debugging Mutex and Locks

When there are multiple Mutex's in the program, it may be required to find if a particular thread is locked far longer than necessary. This can cause problems and the output may not be what is expected.

To get round this, I took an old example from here and modified it to help me print some debugging info.

I modified the printSomething() in Singleton.h to add a sleep as follows:

  void printSomething(char *name, int count)
 {
   Lock guard(mutex_);
   Sleep(10);
   Lock guard2(mutex_);
   std::cout << name << " loop " << count << std::endl;
 }

and I modified the Mutex.h as follows:

//Example from http://www.relisoft.com/Win32/active.html
#if !defined _MUTEX_H_
#define _MUTEX_H_

class Mutex
{
   friend class Lock;
public:
   Mutex () { InitializeCriticalSection (& _critSection); }
   ~Mutex () { DeleteCriticalSection (& _critSection); }
private:
   void Acquire ()
   {
     DWORD start = GetTickCount();
     EnterCriticalSection (& _critSection);
     DWORD elapsed = GetTickCount() - start;
     if (elapsed > 15)
     {
       //Debugging Info
        std::cout<<"Debugging Info: Waited at mutex for "<<elapsed<<std::endl;
     }
   }
   void Release ()
   {
       LeaveCriticalSection (& _critSection);
   }

   CRITICAL_SECTION _critSection;
};

#endif 

The output is as follows:

The small problem with the above approach is that if a Thread is deadlocked, we may not get the debug output as we would have to kill the process.

Another Multi-Threading example with Mutex

Here is an example where we combine the previous programs to create a multi-threaded mutex based program. If you havent already seen, then please check out the Singleton class and Multi-Threading with Thread Sync.

We are going to have some .h files in this example.

Lock.h

//Example from http://www.relisoft.com/Win32/active.html
#if !defined _LOCK_H_
#define _LOCK_H_

#include "Mutex.h"

class Lock
{
public:
    // Acquire the state of the semaphore
    Lock ( Mutex & mutex )
        : _mutex(mutex)
    {
        _mutex.Acquire();
    }
    // Release the state of the semaphore
    ~Lock ()
    {
        _mutex.Release();
    }
private:
    Mutex & _mutex;
};

#endif 

Mutex.h

//Example from http://www.relisoft.com/Win32/active.html
#if !defined _MUTEX_H_
#define _MUTEX_H_

class Mutex
{
    friend class Lock;
public:
    Mutex () { InitializeCriticalSection (& _critSection); }
    ~Mutex () { DeleteCriticalSection (& _critSection); }
private:
    void Acquire ()
    {
        EnterCriticalSection (& _critSection);
    }
    void Release ()
    {
        LeaveCriticalSection (& _critSection);
    }

    CRITICAL_SECTION _critSection;
};

#endif 

Singleton.h

#include "Lock.h"
#include "Mutex.h"

class aSingletonClass
{
public:
  //method to get Instance of class
  static aSingletonClass *getInstance( void )
  {
    //Note that the class is only created when this method is called first time
    if(!instance_)
      instance_ = new aSingletonClass;
    return instance_;
  }
  //method to delete Instance of class
  static void deleteInstance( void )
  {
    if(instance_)
      delete instance_;
    instance_ = NULL; //important as this can create dead reference problems
  }
  void printSomething(char *name, int count)
  {
    Lock guard(mutex_);
    std::cout << name << " loop " << count << std::endl;
  }

private:
  //variable to store the instance of singleton
  static aSingletonClass *instance_;
  //default constructor should be private to prevent instantiation
  aSingletonClass() {};
  //destructor should be made private so no one can delete this accidently
  ~aSingletonClass() {};
  //We also need to prevent copy being created of the object
  aSingletonClass(const aSingletonClass&);

  Mutex mutex_;
}; 

Thread.cpp

//Program tested on Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 - Zahid Ghadialy
//This shows example of Multithreading, thread sync, Mutex
#include <windows.h>
#include <process.h>
#include <iostream>
#include "Singleton.h"

using namespace std;

aSingletonClass* aSingletonClass::instance_ = NULL;

void Func1(void *);
void Func2(void *);

int main()
{
  HANDLE hThreads[2];

  aSingletonClass *someVar = NULL;
  //Create Instance
  someVar = aSingletonClass::getInstance();

  //Create two threads and start them
  hThreads[0] = (HANDLE)_beginthread(Func1, 0, NULL);
  hThreads[1] = (HANDLE)_beginthread(Func2, 0, NULL);

  //Makes sure that both the threads have finished before going further
  WaitForMultipleObjects(2, hThreads, TRUE, INFINITE);

  cout << "Main exit" << endl;
  return 0;
}

void Func1(void *P)
{
  int Count;

  for (Count = 1; Count < 11; Count++)
  {
    aSingletonClass::getInstance()->printSomething("Func1", Count);
  }
  return;
}

void Func2(void *P)
{
  int Count;

  for (Count = 10; Count > 0; Count--)
  {
    aSingletonClass::getInstance()->printSomething("Func2", Count);
  }
  return;
}

The Output is as follows:

Multi-threading with Thread Synchronisation

Here is an example explaining the concept of multiple threads and their synchronisation:

//Program tested on Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 - Zahid Ghadialy
//Example from http://www.adrianxw.dk/SoftwareSite/Threads/Threads2.html
//This shows an example of Multithreading and thread synchronisation
#include <windows.h>
#include <process.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

void Func1(void *);
void Func2(void *);

CRITICAL_SECTION Section; //This will act as Mutex


int main()
{
  HANDLE hThreads[2];
  InitializeCriticalSection(&Section);

  //Create two threads and start them
  hThreads[0] = (HANDLE)_beginthread(Func1, 0, NULL);
  hThreads[1] = (HANDLE)_beginthread(Func2, 0, NULL);

  //Makes sure that both the threads have finished before going further
  WaitForMultipleObjects(2, hThreads, TRUE, INFINITE);

  //This is done after all threads have finished processing
  DeleteCriticalSection(&Section);

  cout << "Main exit" << endl;
  return 0;
}

void Func1(void *P)
{
  int Count;

  for (Count = 1; Count < 11; Count++)
  {
    EnterCriticalSection(&Section);
      cout << "Func1 loop " << Count << endl;
    LeaveCriticalSection(&Section);
  }
  return;
}

void Func2(void *P)
{
  int Count;

  for (Count = 10; Count > 0; Count--)
  {
    EnterCriticalSection(&Section);
      cout << "Func2 loop " << Count << endl;
    LeaveCriticalSection(&Section);
  }
  return;
}

The output is as follows:
Complete explanation of the above program is available here.