What does the error VgTs_WaitSys mean in Valgrind?

Question

I have a server written in C that spawns a new thread whenever a new client connects. In order to test my server I have written a script that emulates 500 clients. The server handles the first couple of hundred clients and towards the end I get the following error from Valgrind:

Thread 456: status = VgTs_WaitSys
==4182==    at 0x4E383EC: recv (recv.c:34)
==4182==    by 0x4017F1: process_data (socket2.h:45)
==4182==    by 0x40195E: thread (FBServer.c:82)
==4182==    by 0x4E30A03: start_thread (pthread_create.c:300)
==4182==    by 0x532DD4C: clone (clone.S:112)

Thread 457: status = VgTs_WaitSys
==4182==    at 0x4E383EC: recv (recv.c:34)
==4182==    by 0x4017F1: process_data (socket2.h:45)
==4182==    by 0x40195E: thread (FBServer.c:82)
==4182==    by 0x4E30A03: start_thread (pthread_create.c:300)
==4182==    by 0x532DD4C: clone (clone.S:112)

...

Thread 499: status = VgTs_WaitSys
==4182==    at 0x4E383EC: recv (recv.c:34)
==4182==    by 0x4017F1: process_data (socket2.h:45)
==4182==    by 0x40195E: thread (FBServer.c:82)
==4182==    by 0x4E30A03: start_thread (pthread_create.c:300)
==4182==    by 0x532DD4C: clone (clone.S:112)

At line 82 in FBServer.c, the thread calls a function called process_data that receives data from the client. The function process_data is shown below:

void process_data(int clientSock)
{
    size_t n;
    char jstring[MAX_LEN + 1];
    int bytes_received_so_far = 0;
    int bytes_count;
    char *buf = NULL;

    while(bytes_count = recv(clientSock, jstring, MAX_LEN, 0))
    {
        if(bytes_count <= 0)
        {
            close(clientSock);
            pthread_exit(NULL);
        }

        printf("Bytes received = %d\n", bytes_count);                           
        jstring[bytes_count] = '\0';

        ...
        ...
    }
}

Can someone help me in interpreting the error messages.

Answer 1

What version of Valgrind are you using?

About the only comment I could find in the source was:

VgTs_WaitSys, /* waiting for a syscall to complete */

So it appears to indicate that the program is just blocking on a system call (recv in your case). I'm not sure, but this may not be an error at all, just some extra info kicked out by Valgrind.