some functions that should have been testing whether pthread_self()
had been called and initialized the thread pointer were instead
testing whether pthread_create() had been called and actually made the
program "threaded". while it's unlikely any mismatch would occur in
real-world problems, this could have introduced subtle bugs. now, we
store the address of the main thread's thread descriptor in the libc
structure and use its presence as a flag that the thread register is
initialized. note that after fork, the calling thread (not necessarily
the original main thread) is the new main thread.