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feat: cross-platform force-kill primitive for stuck PHP threads#2365

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nicolas-grekas wants to merge 1 commit intophp:mainfrom
nicolas-grekas:force-kill-primitives
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feat: cross-platform force-kill primitive for stuck PHP threads#2365
nicolas-grekas wants to merge 1 commit intophp:mainfrom
nicolas-grekas:force-kill-primitives

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@nicolas-grekas
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@nicolas-grekas nicolas-grekas commented Apr 22, 2026

First step of the split suggested in #2287: land the force-kill
infrastructure as a standalone, reviewable primitive independent of
background workers.

Design

Each PHP thread, at boot from its own TSRM context, hands a
force_kill_slot (pointers to its EG(vm_interrupt) and EG(timed_out)
atomic bools, plus pthread_t / Windows HANDLE) back to Go via
go_frankenphp_store_force_kill_slot. The slot lives on phpThread
and is protected by a per-thread RWMutex so the zero-and-release path
at thread exit cannot race an in-flight kill. From any goroutine, Go
passes the slot back to frankenphp_force_kill_thread, which stores
true into both atomic bools (waking the VM at the next opcode
boundary, routing through zend_timeout -> "Maximum execution time
exceeded") and delivers a platform-specific wake-up:

  • Linux/FreeBSD: pthread_kill(SIGRTMIN+3) with a no-op handler
    installed once via pthread_once, SA_ONSTACK, no SA_RESTART.
    Signal delivery returns any in-flight blocking syscall with EINTR.
  • Windows: CancelSynchronousIo + QueueUserAPC covers alertable
    I/O and SleepEx. Non-alertable Sleep (including PHP's usleep)
    stays uninterruptible.
  • macOS: atomic-bool path only; threads stuck in blocking syscalls
    wait for the syscall to complete naturally.

Reserved signal: SIGRTMIN+3. A PHP script that calls
pcntl_signal(SIGRTMIN+3, ...) clobbers this. Embedders whose own Go
code uses SIGRTMIN+3 must patch it here. glibc NPTL reserves
SIGRTMIN..SIGRTMIN+2, so the offset cannot go lower.

Drain integration

drainWorkerThreads waits drainGracePeriod (5s) for each thread to
reach Yielding, then arms force-kill on stragglers and keeps
waiting
until they yield. phpThread.shutdown does the same. There
is no abandon path: if a thread is stuck in a syscall force-kill cannot
interrupt (macOS, Windows non-alertable Sleep), the drain blocks until
the syscall returns naturally — matching pre-patch behaviour exactly,
just typically much faster because force-kill cuts a sleep(60) down
to milliseconds. Operators that want a harder bound rely on their
orchestrator (systemd, k8s, supervisord) to SIGKILL the process.

go_frankenphp_on_thread_shutdown runs on both the healthy path and
the unhealthy-during-Shutdown path so state.Done is set even when
force-kill bails the thread. Without it, phpThread.shutdown's
WaitFor(state.Done) would never unblock.

Testing

TestRestartWorkersForceKillsStuckThread drives the full path via a
marker file so RestartWorkers only arms once the worker is proven
parked in sleep(), then asserts bounded elapsed time and that the
post-sleep echo never runs.

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Looks pretty good. FYI: bugs like php/php-src#21267 mean that sometimes JIT just will never hit these vm breakpoints. So, be prepared for bug reports that aren't related to this change, but are due to JIT.

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@dunglas
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dunglas commented Apr 24, 2026

Good work! Shouldn't this code be directly on php-src (TSRM)? It could be useful in other contexts than FrankenPHP.

@nicolas-grekas
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@dunglas dunno in the future, but at the moment, this allows providing the capablity to all versions of PHP, without having to wait for an hypothetical merge in 8.6+.

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@henderkes
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@dunglas dunno in the future, but at the moment, this allows providing the capablity to all versions of PHP, without having to wait for an hypothetical merge in 8.6+.

The two don't exclude each other, it would actually help getting this upstreamed because it will open the doors to more calls being switched to alertable. Once that lands in master, we can backport it in FrankenPHP for 8.4+.

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nicolas-grekas commented Apr 24, 2026

PR should be ready! It took me a while to get it correct. PR description is updated. Lots of comments in the patch; let me know if that's too much.

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PR ready twice 😅
I removed the "abandon" trial, that's a dead end. This is now really just a best effort and we wait for threads to stop on their own after signaling them (like before).

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Comment thread frankenphp.c Outdated
Introduces a self-contained primitive that wakes a PHP thread parked in
a blocking call (sleep, synchronous I/O, etc.) so the graceful drain
used by RestartWorkers / DrainWorkers / Shutdown completes promptly
instead of waiting for the syscall to return naturally.

Design: each PHP thread, at boot from its own TSRM context, hands a
force_kill_slot (pointers to its EG(vm_interrupt) and EG(timed_out)
atomic bools, plus pthread_t / Windows HANDLE) back to Go via
go_frankenphp_store_force_kill_slot. The slot lives on phpThread and is
protected by a per-thread RWMutex so the zero-and-release path at
thread exit cannot race an in-flight kill. From any goroutine, Go
passes the slot back to frankenphp_force_kill_thread, which stores
true into both bools (waking the VM at the next opcode boundary,
routing through zend_timeout -> "Maximum execution time exceeded") and
delivers a platform-specific wake-up:

- Linux/FreeBSD: pthread_kill(SIGRTMIN+3) with a no-op handler installed
  via pthread_once, SA_ONSTACK, no SA_RESTART. Signal delivery causes
  the in-flight blocking syscall to return EINTR.
- Windows: CancelSynchronousIo + QueueUserAPC covers alertable I/O and
  SleepEx. Non-alertable Sleep (including PHP's usleep) stays
  uninterruptible.
- macOS: atomic-bool-only path. Threads stuck in blocking syscalls wait
  for the syscall to complete naturally.

Reserved signal: SIGRTMIN+3. PHP's pcntl_signal(SIGRTMIN+3, ...)
clobbers it; embedders whose own Go code uses that signal must patch
the constant. glibc NPTL reserves SIGRTMIN..SIGRTMIN+2.

Drain integration: drainWorkerThreads waits drainGracePeriod (5s) for
each thread to reach Yielding, then arms force-kill on stragglers and
keeps waiting until they yield. phpThread.shutdown does the same.
There is no abandon path: if a thread is stuck in a syscall force-kill
cannot interrupt (macOS, Windows non-alertable Sleep) the drain blocks
until the syscall returns naturally - matching pre-patch behaviour
exactly, just typically much faster because force-kill cuts a 60s
sleep down to milliseconds. Operators that want a harder bound rely on
their orchestrator (systemd, k8s, supervisord) to SIGKILL the process.

worker_test.go + testdata/worker-sleep.php exercise the full path:
the test marks a file before sleep(60), polls until the worker is
proven parked, then asserts RestartWorkers completes within the grace
period and that the post-sleep echo never runs (which would mean the
VM interrupt was never observed).
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5 participants