Subj : Linux pthreads, C-program, how to timeout a thread?
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : fj40rockcrawler
Date : Wed Apr 27 2005 05:48 pm

I've done several searches but can't find anything really specific to
what I'm doing.  This is the first program I have ever used threads
with.

The program talks to a serial port with standard Linux read/write
function calls.  However, those are blocking calls, like the read, it
will block until there is something to read.  I don't want a broken
link to stop the whole program, so I'm using threads.  I have a modbus
thread and a logic thread.  The modbus thread does the actual
reading/writing on the serial port and updates a global array of values
(using the mutex lock/unlock method, so data integrity is protected).
However I would like the read/write functions to basically be in their
own thread also (a 'small' thread perhaps, with only that function?),
that I could time out.  So I could say if the ReadMBThread didn't
complete in 100ms I would terminate it and log and error and go on.

I have not found anything specific about timing a thread like that.  I
read up on the TimedWait where you're either waiting on a condition or
mutex to become free.  I guess I could rig the code up with that, so
technically it would be waiting on a mutex, but not really since it's
really just waiting on the read/write function to complete, but I could
have some mutexs to solve that probably.

Any ideas?  Can you put a timeout on a thread when you create it?

Thanks in advance!
Mark Brodis
fj40rockcrawler@gmail.com

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