I am writing a client-server program in c where I have to send multiple image files from the server to the client. Is there any way for the server to know when the client has finished reading from socket, creating the image file locally, and successfully written to it? P.S. I already tried sending a message to the socket and when I try to read the socket from the server, the program hangs. Any help will be much appreciated.
Here is a function from the Server code which sends the file to socket:
while(1)
{
unsigned char buf[256] = {0};
int n = fread(buf,1,256,fp);
if(n>0) { send(sockfd,buf,n,0); }
if(n<256) {
if(feof(fp))
printf("Sent to socket\n");
break;
}
}
fclose(fp);
}
char buf[5]
read(sockfd,buf,5);
if(strcmp(buf,"ready")==0) //send more files
And here is a function from the client to write to the file:
FILE* fp;
fp = fopen(file_path,"ab");
char buf[256];
int num;
int total=0;
while(( num = recv(sockfd,buf,256,0))>0)
{
total+=num;
fwrite(buf,1,num,fp);
}
fclose(fp);
write(sockfd,"ready",5);
}
When I do a read on the server after one file transfer, the program hangs.
You problem is here in the client:
while(( num = recv(sockfd,buf,256,0))>0)
recv() will only return 0 at end-of-file - ie when the server shuts down the sending side of the socket. However your server isn't doing that - it's waiting for a response from the client. This means you deadlock.
If you want to send multiple images in the one connection, you need to send your client some information to allow it to tell when one image ends. One way to do this is to first send your client the size of the file it should expect, then the file data. The client can then keep track of how many bytes it's recieved, and send the "ready" reponse after that.
You need a kind of protocol to allow :
the server to tell the client that all has been written
the client to tell the server that all has been read
If you only send one file, the simplest way is to use shutdown(sockfd, SHUT_WR) server side after all data has beed sent. That way the client will get a 0 as return from recv signaling end of data and will be able to send its acknowledgement. But you can no longer write on the socket server side.
If you want to be able to send more than one file, you will have to imagine a cleverer protocol. A common one would be to send blocs of data preceded by their size
short sz = htons(n); /* deals with possible endianness problems */
send(sockfd, &sz, sizeof(short), 0)
send(sockfd, buf, n);
And a sz == 0 (with no buf ...) would signal end of data
This would still be a simple protocol with no error recovery, but at least it can work when no incident happens.
Related
Before I Start
Please don't mark this question as a duplicate. I have already seen the numerous posts on SO about handling multiple clients with socket programming. Most people recommend just multi-threading, but I am trying to avoid that path because I have read it has a few problems:
Bad Scalability
Large Overhead/Inefficient/Memory Hungry
Difficult to Debug
Any posts that I have read that specifically talk about using a single thread either have bad/no answers or have unclear explanations, like people saying "Just use select()!"
The Problem
I am writing code for a server to handle multiple (~1000) clients, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to create an efficient solution. Right now I already have the code for my server that is able to handle 1 client at a time. Both are written in C; the server is on Windows using WinSock and the client is on Linux.
The server and client send several communications back and forth, using send() and blocking recv() calls. Writing this code was pretty simple, and I won't post it here because it is pretty long and I doubt anyone will actually read through all of it. Also the exact implementation is not important, I just want to talk about high level pseudocode. The real difficulty is changing the server to handle multiple clients.
What's Already Out There
I have found a nice PDF tutorial about how to create a WinSock server that handles multiple clients and it can be found here: WinSock Multiple Client Support. It's in C++ but it's easily transferable to C.
From what I understand the server operates something like this:
while (running) {
Sleep(1000);
/* Accept all incoming clients and add to clientArray. */
for (client in clientArray) {
/* Interact with client */
if (recv(...) == "disconnect") {
/* Disconnect from client */
}
}
}
/* Close all connections. */
The problem that I see with using this approach is that you essentially only handle one client at a time (which is obvious because you aren't multithreading), but what if the interaction with each client only needs to happen once? Meaning, what if I just want to send some data back and forth and close the connection? This operation could take anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes depending on the speed of the clients connection, so other clients would be blocking on a connect() call to the server while the server handles a client for 5 minutes. It doesn't seem very efficient, but maybe the best way would be to implement a waiting queue, where clients are connected and told to wait for a while? I'm not sure, but it makes me curious about how large servers send out update downloads concurrently to thousands of clients, and if I should operate the same way.
Also, is there a reason for adding a Sleep(1000) call in the main server loop, if the send() and recv() between the server and client take a while (~1 minute)?
What I'm Asking For
What I want is a solution to handling multiple clients on a single threaded server that is efficient enough for ~1000 clients. If you tell me that the solution in the PDF is fine, that's good enough for me (maybe I'm just too preoccupied with efficiency.)
Please give answers that include a verbal explanation of the implementation, server/client pseudocode, or even a small sample code for the server, if you're feeling sadistic.)
Thanks in advance.
I have written single thread socket pool handling. Im using non-blocking sockets and select call to handle all send, receive and errors.
My class keep all sockets in array, and build 3 fd set's for select call. When something happens it check read or write or error list and handle those events.
For example, non-blocking client socket during connection can trigger write or error event. If error event happens then connection failed. If write happens, connection is established.
All sockets is in read fd set. If you create server socket (with bind and listen) new connection will trigger read event. Then check if socket is server socket then call accept for new connection. If read operation is triggered by regular socket then there is some bytes to read.. just call recv with buffer arge enough to suck all data from that socket.
SOCKET maxset=0;
fd_set rset, wset, eset;
FD_ZERO(&rset);
FD_ZERO(&wset);
FD_ZERO(&eset);
for (size_t i=0; i<readsockets.size(); i++)
{
SOCKET s = readsockets[i]->s->GetSocket();
FD_SET(s, &rset);
if (s > maxset) maxset = s;
}
for (size_t i=0; i<writesockets.size(); i++)
{
SOCKET s = writesockets[i]->s->GetSocket();
FD_SET(s, &wset);
if (s > maxset) maxset = s;
}
for (size_t i=0; i<errorsockets.size(); i++)
{
SOCKET s = errorsockets[i]->s->GetSocket();
FD_SET(s, &eset);
if (s > maxset) maxset = s;
}
int ret = 0;
if (bBlocking)
ret = select(maxset + 1, &rset, &wset, &eset, NULL/*&tv*/);
else
{
timeval tv= {0, timeout*1000};
ret = select(maxset + 1, &rset, &wset, &eset, &tv);
}
if (ret < 0)
{
//int err = errno;
NetworkCheckError();
return false;
}
if (ret > 0)
{
// loop through eset and check each with FD_ISSET. if you find some socket it means connect failed
// loop through wset and check each with FD_ISSET. If you find some socket check is there any pending connectin on that socket. If there is pending connection then that socket just got connected. Otherwise select just reported that some data has been sent and you can send more.
// finally, loop through rset and check each with FD_ISSET. If you find some socket then check is this socket your server socket (bind and listen). If its server socket then this is signal new client want to connect.. just call accept and new connection is established. If this is not server socket, then just do recv on that socket to collect new data.
}
There is few more things to handle... All sockets must be in non-blocking mode. Each send or recv calls will return -1 (error) but error code is EWOULDBLOCK. Thats normal and ignore error. If recv returns 0 then this connection is dropped. If send return 0 bytes sent then internal buffer is full.
You need to write additional code to serialize and parse data. For example, after recv, message may not be complete (depending on message size) so it may take more than one recv calls to receive complete message. Sometimes if messages is short recv call can deliver several messages in buffer. So, you need to write good parser or design good protocol, easy to parse.
First, regarding single-thread approach: I'd say it's bad idea because your server processing power is limited by performance of single processor core. But other than that it'll work to some extent.
Now about multiclient problem. I'd suggest using WSASend and WSARecv with their compilation routines. It also can be scaled to multiple threads if necessary.
Server core will look something like this:
struct SocketData {
::SOCKET socket;
::WSAOVERLAPPED overlapped;
::WSABUF bufferRef;
char buf [1024];
// other client-related data
SocketData (void) {
overlapped->hEvent = (HANDLE) this;
bufferRef->buf = buf;
bufferRef->len = sizeof (buf);
// ...
}
};
void OnRecv (
DWORD dwError,
DWORD cbTransferred,
LPWSAOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped,
DWORD dwFlags) {
auto data = (SocketData*) lpOverlapped->hEvent;
if (dwError || !cbTransferred) {
::closesocket (data->socket);
delete data;
return;
}
// process received data
// ...
}
// same for OnSend
void main (void) {
// init and start async listener
::SOCKET serverSocket = ::socket (...);
HANDLE hAccept = ::CreateEvent (nullptr, 0, 0, nullptr);
::WSAEventSelect (serverSocket, FD_ACCEPT, hAccept);
::bind (serverSocket, ...);
::listen (serverSocket, ...);
// main loop
for (;;) {
int r = ::WaitForSingleObjectEx (hAccept, INFINITE, 1);
if (r == WAIT_IO_COMPLETION)
continue;
// accept processing
auto data = new SocketData ();
data->socket = ::accept (serverSocket, ...);
// detach new socket from hAccept event
::WSAEventSelect (data->socket, 0, nullptr);
// recv first data from client
::WSARecv (
data->socket,
&data->bufferRef,
1,
nullptr,
0,
&data->overlapped,
&OnRecv);
}
}
Key points:
wait in main loop (WaitForSingleObjectEx, WaitForMultipleObjectsEx etc.) must be alertable;
most data processing done in OnSend/OnRecv;
all processing must be done without blocking APIs in OnSend/OnRecv;
for event-based processing events must be waited in main loop.
OnRecv will be called for each processed incoming packet. OnSend will be called for each processed outgoing packet. Keep in mind: how many data you asked to send/recv is not the same as what actually processed in packet.
I'm trying to get a server to receive messages from a client in TCP.
The problem is, I only receive the messages on the server side once I close the socket on the client side.
Here is the read function on the server side:
char *read_socket(int fd){
int bytesRcvd, aux;
char *buffer=(char*)malloc(BUFFSIZE*sizeof(char));
bytesRcvd=read(fd, buffer , BUFFSIZE);
aux=bytesRcvd;
while(bytesRcvd>0){
if((bytesRcvd = read(fd, &buffer[aux], BUFFSIZE))<0){
printf("read() failed!: %s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(1);
}
aux+=bytesRcvd;
}
return &buffer[0];
}
I know (by printfs) that it gets stuck on the line:
bytesRcvd = read(fd, &buffer[aux], BUFFSIZE)
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Your program is reading the data in the line:
bytesRcvd = read(fd, &buffer[aux], BUFFSIZE)
Your while loop receives the data that the client sends. If the client doesn't have data to send read will block until the connection is closed where read will return 0 and you will exit from while loop.
This is the reason that you think that the data are send in the end (when connection is closed). This is not right, if you print the data you read in the while loop you will see them immediately and not all of them in the end.
Though you can't return the data before the connection is closed due to read() blocking.
For one client your program may seems ok if you don't have the problem of getting data at the end (as I said you could just print them inside while loop) but imagine have two or more clients then you would firstly close connection with first client to go on and read data from second and so on.
One solution(to both problems) is to use select() system call, this will go on to read only if there are data.( Though select() is not safe when using fork()- doesn't guarantee that a parent of child process will not block in read() ).
I am working on an program for school and having some issues with sockets. I have pasted the write and read commands from my program below since I think these are the problem. The program should take the plaintext file and encrypt it using the key provided.
MY PROBLEM: When I execute the program using "client [plaintext] [key] [port]" the program returns "Reading data from client -- 140 bytes" and then just hangs. I can hit ctrl-c and the program prints the correct output for ptext and ktext and that 37 bytes were sent back to the client (which is the correct number of bytes). I feel like the encrypted text should print as well but it does not.
TWO QUESTIONS:
1) Why does the program hang?
2) Why does it seem like data is written from the server to the client but the client does not read any of the data?
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.
CLIENT
n = write(sockfd,ptext,strlen(ptext));
bzero(crypt_text, BUF_MAX);
bzero(buffer, BUF_MAX);
while((n = read(sockfd,buffer,BUF_MAX))>0){
printf("Reading data from Server -- %d bytes\n",n);
strcat(crypt_text, buffer);
bzero(buffer,BUF_MAX);
}
if (n < 0){
error("ERROR reading from socket");
}
printf("%s", crypt_text);
SERVER
while((n = read(newsockfd,buffer,512))>0){
printf("Reading data from client -- %d bytes\n",n);
strcat(full_text, buffer);
bzero(buffer,BUF_MAX);
}
if (n < 0){
error("ERROR reading from socket");
}
bzero (ptext,BUF_MAX);
bzero (ktext, BUF_MAX);
strcpy(ptext, strtok(full_text,"["));
strcpy(ktext, strtok(NULL, "["));
printf("ptext length ==%s %d\n\n",ptext,strlen(ptext)); //Prints the correct plain text
printf("ktext length ==%s %d\n\n",ktext,strlen(ktext)); //prints the correct key
crypt_text = encrypt(ptext, ktext);
n = write(newsockfd,crypt_text,strlen(crypt_text));
printf("WRITE TO CILENT ==== %d",n); //This returns the correct number of bytes that should be sent back to client
if (n < 0){
error("ERROR writing to socket");
}
As is, your client and server will always hang waiting for each other. This is because read() blocks by default until new data is available to fetch from the file (in this case, a socket).
Look carefully at the code:
The client writes once into the socket before entering the read loop
The server only reads from the socket (well, further down there is a write(), but it will never reach it). The first time the loop runs on the server, it will read the data that the client initially wrote into the socket.
The server processes the data it just read and concatenates it to full_text. Then it goes back to the loop condition, where it calls read() again. read() blocks because there is nothing else to read from the socket at this point.
The client enters a similar loop where it attempts to read from the socket, expecting messages from the server.
At this point, both the server and the client are blocked waiting for messages from each other, which will never happen.
Tu put it another way: you only wrote to the socket once, and somehow you expect to read it multiple times.
You have to rethink your design. Go back to the problem description, work your way through a simple protocol, dry run it on paper, and then implement it - that's how it's done in the real world :)
There are other bugs in your code. For example you write this:
strcat(full_text, buffer);
But buffer is not NUL terminated. n bytes have been read, the rest of the buffer is indeterminate. You should set a '\0' byte at offset n and only try reading BUF_MAX-1 bytes to keep a byte available for all cases and do this:
buffer[n] = '\0';
strcat(full_text, buffer);
Furthermore, you do not test if there is enough room available in full_text for the n+1 bytes strcat will copy at the end.
On another front, packets can be sliced and diced into chunked of different sizes when received by the server. Buffering is required to ensure a reliable client / server communication. To enable this buffering, you need to devise a protocol to determine when a packet has been fully received: a simple protocol is to transmit lines terminated by '\n'.
I have the following situation. My server receives data from remote server (fd_server) and forwards it to the client (fd_client). I'm using edge triggered epoll so I can handle multiple clients and multiple server conncetions.
Procedure:
client connects to the server.
my server connects to the remote server and requests data.
remote server responds and my server forwards data to the client.
Details:
After my server connects to the remote server the fd_server is added to epoll control with EPOLLIN flag. Server waits for events.
When epoll_wait return the fd_server as readable I go in the following loop displayed bellow.
After some read/writes my sctp_sendmsg return EAGAIN, which means sctp send buffer is full. How should I handle this situation without loosing the data I have already read from the fd_server socket?
IS there a way of knowing before hand, how much data can I send, so I only read the right amount?
while(1){
N = recv(fd_server,buf, sizeof buf,0);
if (N == -1){
/* If errno == EAGAIN, that means we have read all
data. So go back to the main loop. */
if (errno != EAGAIN){
perror ("tcp_recv error");
}
break;
}
if(N == 0){
/* End of file. The remote has closed the
connection. */
close(fd_server);
break;
}
pos = 0;
while(pos < N){
got = sctp_sendmsg(fd_client, &buf[pos], N-pos, to, tolen, 0, 0, stream, 0, 0);
if(got<=0){
if (errno == EAGAIN){
//what to do?
}else{
perror("tcp to sctp send error");
}
}
else{
pos += got;}
}
}
After some read/writes my sctp_sendmsg return EAGAIN, which means sctp send buffer is full. How should I handle this situation without losing the data I have already read from the fd_server socket?
You need to keep some sort of "context" (data structure) for each fd_client socket. For each new client socket that gets connected to your server, create an instance of a "connection state" struct and store it in a hash table. This will be something like the following:
struct ConnectionState
{
int fd_client; // socket
uint8_t buffer[MAX_CHUNK_SIZE]; // protocol buffer for this connection
int buffer_length; // how many bytes received into this buffer
int pos; // how many bytes transmitted back out on fd_client from "buffer"
int has_data; // boolean to indicate protocol state (1 if there's still data in buffer to send)
};
If you can't send everything at once, toggle the fd_client socket from EPOLLIN to EPOLLOUT in your epoll mode. Change "has_data" to true in the ConnectionState structure. Then go back to waiting for socket events. When you are able to send again, you look at your ConnectionState struct for that socket to decide if you still need to keep sending or receive a new buffer.
Be careful with edge triggered sockets. When you do transition from EPOLLOUT back to EPOLLIN, you need to go ahead and recv() again just to make sure you don't lose any data. (Similarly for entering the send state, try an initial send).
The situation: I am creating a server daemon in c that accepts numerous simultaneous connections, and the clients will be sending data to the server. I currently have each client connection being spawned into a new thread.
The problem: if a client sends numerous lines of content very quickly (eg, 10 lines of data in less than a second), the server will see the first two lines, but not the rest.
The question: How can I "queue" the data coming in from the clients (the recv command in c)? Is this something that select or poll would be needed for? Basically, I want to make sure any client can send large amounts of data very quickly without having to worry about any content being dropped. How can this be achieved?
Sample Code: (note: the below code has obviously been heavily modified, esp. by removing error checking. I tried to modify my code so as to make the problem/solution clear without getting bogged down in semantics of irrelevant parts. Please don't get caught up with any non-standard or missing elements here)
//this function handles the threads
void *ThreadedFunction(void *arg) {
// do some stuff, like: pull vars out of mystruct
int nbytes;
char buf[256];
while(1) {
if((nbytes=recv(conid, buf, sizeof buf, 0)) <= 0) {
//handle break in connection
} else {
//for this example, just print out data from client to make my point
buf[nbytes] = 0;
printf("%s\n",buf);
}
}
}
//main just sets up the connections and creates threads
int main(int argc. char *argv[])
{
// bind(), listen(), etc... blah blah blah
while(1) {
conid = accept(...); //get a connection
// ... build mystruct to pass vars to threaded function ...
pthread_t p;
pthread_create(&p,NULL,ThreadedFunction,&mystruct); //create new thread
}
}
You don't need to "queue" the data coming in from the clients.
Because TCP do that for you. Flow control of TCP even slows down clients, if the server is too slow to make space to TCP receiving buffer.
So, probably there is bug in the code of server or client. Maybe client sends '\0' in the end of each line. In that case, the following code would not print all lines:
if((nbytes=recv(conid, buf, sizeof buf, 0)) <= 0) {
//handle break in connection
} else {
//for this example, just print out data from client to make my point
buf[nbytes] = 0;
printf("%s\n",buf);
}
It is even expected that the 2nd line is the last line what you see, if client sends '\0' at the end of each line.
For example:
If client sends the following lines:
"abc\n\0"
"def\n\0"
"ghi\n\0"
TCP will usually send those by using two packets, that contains following:
"abc\n\0"
"def\n\0ghi\n\0"
Server usually needs 2 recv calls to receive the incoming data.
So your server will use 2 print calls:
printf("%s\n", "abc\n\0\0");
printf("%s\n", "def\n\0ghi\n\0\0");
And the result output is:
abc
def