What does errno 58 (EOWNERDEAD) in Solaris mean?

EOWNERDEAD

Robust mutex recovery

EOWNERDEAD is Solaris errno 58 (process died with the lock). Solaris acquired a robust mutex whose previous owner died before unlocking it.

The caller owns the robust mutex after receiving this result but must validate and repair the protected state before marking it consistent. Simply unlocking it without recovery can convert the condition into an unrecoverable mutex state.

What to check

• The protected state may be inconsistent and must be repaired before the mutex is marked consistent.
• If recovery cannot be completed, later lockers can see ENOTRECOVERABLE.
• Log the protected object, not only the mutex address.

References

• Oracle Solaris intro(2): error numbers
• illumos errno.h definitions
• POSIX errno.h