I've not been successful in finding help with this issue. What I want to do is following: I have some C-based executables that implement the server side logic. There should be one process running this executable per client. The process should be invoked upon the first HTTP request form the client and killed once a specific HTTP request comes in later on.
So here's the question. How can I start a new process from a FCGI program based on HTTP request internals, run my C-executable in that process and later kill the process from the same FCGI program? Effectively the serving C application processes then run in the background.
if you download the devkit from fastcgi.com it contains an example for threaded server that uses the libfcgi functions to pick apart the headers in the worker threads.
should give you a good starting point for managing your executable instance(s).
Related
I have a need to provide restful api support to a linux deamon process that will maintain and manipulate a in-memory table (simple C structure of arrays). This deamon will act as a configuration entity and will relay the table contents to another process on its bootup or during configuration request.
Now in this context i would be happy to obtain the following information:
Would it be good to have an integrated web server or have an independent web server and talk to this daemon. Please note this server would not be required to handle huge loads.
Please suggest some good web servers with good REST support.
If an independent web server then what is the best mechanism for web server to deamon communication.
Please note this would be deployed on a small embedded board running debian.
Well, a possible solution is based on developing a CGI that is executed by any webserver (apache, lighttpd, ...) . This program connects to the main daemon with an IPC mechanism such as sockets, fifos or message queues and after interacting with the daemons returns the desired output to the REST client.
The CGI program can be written in any language, but if you want to write it in C, check this project: it's a CGI program written in C that takes commands for an IP camera. The connection with a main daemon is not implemented, since it was outside the scope of the project. I like it because it has an embedded XML parser and does not require any external library
At some point my site, running on Apache2 with mod_wsgi just stops processing requests. The connection to server is maintained and client waits for responce, but it never is returned by apache. The server at this time is at 0% CPU, and nothing is processing. I think, apache just sends request to queue and never gets them out of there.
When I perform apache2ctl graceful the problem does not resolve. Only after apache2ctl restart.
My site is a 4 instance wsgi application of Pyramid and 2 instances of Zope 3. It is running normaly and does not have speed problems, that I am aware of.
versions:
Ubuntu 10.04
apache2 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.9
libapache2-mod-wsgi 2.8-2ubuntu1
Sounds like you are using embedded mode to run the multiple applications and you are using third party C extensions that have problems in sub interpreters, resulting in potential deadlock. Else your code is internally deadlocking or blocking on external services and never returning, causing exhaustion of available processes/threads.
For a start, you should look at using daemon mode and delegate each web application to a distinct daemon process group and then forcing each to run in the main interpreter.
See:
http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/QuickConfigurationGuide#Delegation_To_Daemon_Process
http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/ApplicationIssues#Python_Simplified_GIL_State_API
Otherwise use debugging tips described in:
http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/DebuggingTechniques
for getting stack traces about what application is doing.
I am going to implement a server in C as a course project. The server should serve more than one client simultaneously. Description of the project states that fork() should be used to serve more than one client. Each children should write something to a common file. How to handle this synchronously? Is there any mechanism like in Java where only one thread can use a function at the same time?
I have a TCP Svr process written in C and running on CentOS 5.5. It acts as a TCP Server for external clients and also does some IPC communication with other processes in the system using Unix Domain Sockets it has establised. It's not a multi threaded process. It does one task at a time. There's an epoll_wait() I use to listen for requests on either the TCP socket or any of the IPC sockets it has established with internal processes. When the epoll_wait() function breaks,I process the request for whoever it is and then go back into epoll_wait()
I have a TCP Client that connects to this Process from outside (not IPC). It connects sucessfully, sends a request msg, gets a response back. I've put this in an infinite loop
just to test out its robustness etc.
After a while, the TCP Server stops responding to requests coming from TCP Client. The TCP client connects successfully, sends a request message, but it doesnt get any response msg back from the TCP server.
So I reckon the TCP server is stuck somewhere else, trying to do something and has not returned to the epoll_wait() to process
other requests coming in. I've tried to figure it out using logs, but thats not helping me understand where exactly the process is stuck.
So I wanted to use any debugger that can give me some information (function name would be great), as to what the process is doing. Putting breakpoints, is overwhelming cause the TCP Server process has tons of files and functions....
I'm trying to use DDD on CentOS 5.5, to figureout whats going on. I attach to the process successfully. Then I click on "Step" or "Stepi" or "Next" button....
but nothing happens....
btw when I use Eclipse for debugging, and attach to this process (or any process), I always get "__kernel_vsyscall()"....Does this mean, the program breaks by default at
whatever its doing? If thats the case, how do I come out of the __kernel_vsyscall() call, to continue within my program? If I press f8, it comes out, but then I dont know where it was, since I loose the stack trace....Like I said earlier. Since I cant figure where it was, I dont know where to put breakpoint....
In summary, I want to figureout where my process is stuck or what its doing and try to debug from that point on....
How do I go about this?
Thanks
Amit
1) Attaching to a C process can often cause problems in itself, is there any way for you to start the process in the debugger?
2) Using the step functions of DDD need to be done after you've set a breakpoint and the program is stopped on a command. From reading your question, I'm not sure you've done that. You may not want to set many breakpoints, but is setting one or two in critical sections of code possible?
In summary, What I wanted to accomplish was to be able to find where my program is stuck, when it hangs. I figured it out - It was so simple. Create a configuration in Eclipse ...."Debug Configurations->C/C++ attach to application"...
Let the process run normally from shell (preferably with a terminal attached). When it hangs, open eclipse, click on the debug icon and run the configured process. It'll ask you to attach to a process. Look for your process name and attach to it.
Now, just look at the entire stack trace....you'll see some of your own function calls mixed with kernel function calls. That tells you where the program is stuck.
While implementing an applicative server and its client-side libraries in C++, I am having trouble finding a clean and reliable way to stop client processes on server shutdown on Windows.
Assuming the server and its clients run under the same user, the requirements are:
the solution should work in the following cases:
clients may each feature either a console or a gui.
user may be unprivileged.
clients may be or become unresponsive (infinite loop, deadlock).
clients may or may not be children of the server (direct or indirect).
unless prevented by a client-side defect, clients shall be allowed the opportunity to exit cleanly (free their ressources, sync some data to disk...) and some reasonable time to do so.
all client return codes shall be made available (if possible) to the server during the shutdown procedure.
server shall wait until all clients are gone.
As of this edit, the majority of the answers below advocate the use of a shared memory (or another IPC mechanism) between the server and its clients to convey shutdown orders and client status. These solutions would work, but require that clients successfully initialize the library.
What I did not say, is that the server is also used to start the clients and in some cases other programs/scripts which don't use the client library at all. A solution that did not rely on a graceful communication between server and clients would be nicer (if possible).
Some time ago, I stumbled upon a C snippet (in the MSDN I believe) that did the following:
start a thread via CreateRemoteThread in the process to shutdown.
had that thread directly call ExitProcess.
Unfortunately now that I'm looking for it, I'm unable to find it and the search results seem to imply that this trick does not work anymore on Vista. Any expert input on this ?
If you use thread, a simple solution is to use a named system event, the thread sleeps on the event waiting for it to be signaled, the control application can signal the event when it wants the client applications to quit.
For the UI application it (the thread) can post a message to the main window, WM_ CLOSE or QUIT I forget which, in the console application it can issue a CTRL-C or if the main console code loops it can check some exit condition set by the thread.
Either way rather than finding the client applications an telling them to quit, use the OS to signal they should quit. The sleeping thread will use virtually no CPU footprint provided it uses WaitForSingleObject to sleep on.
You want some sort of IPC between clients and servers. If all clients were children, I think pipes would have been easiest; since they're not, I guess a server-operated shared-memory segment can be used to register clients, issue the shutdown command, and collect return codes posted there by clients successfully shutting down.
In this shared-memory area, clients put their process IDs, so that the server can forcefully kill any unresponsive clients (modulo server privileges), using TerminateProcess().
If you are willing to go the IPC route, make the normal communication between client and server bi-directional to let the server ask the clients to shut down. Or, failing that, have the clients poll. Or as the last resort, the clients should be instructed to exit when the make a request to server. You can let the library user register an exit callback, but the best way I know of is to simply call "exit" in the client library when the client is told to shut down. If the client gets stuck in shutdown code, the server needs to be able to work around it by ignoring that client's data structures and connection.
Use PostMessage or a named event.
Re: PostMessage -- applications other than GUIs, as well as threads other than the GUI thread, can have message loops and it's very useful for stuff like this. (In fact COM uses message loops under the hood.) I've done it before with ATL but am a little rusty with that.
If you want to be robust to malicious attacks from "bad" processes, include a private key shared by client/server as one of the parameters in the message.
The named event approach is probably simpler; use CreateEvent with a name that is a secret shared by the client/server, and have the appropriate app check the status of the event (e.g. WaitForSingleObject with a timeout of 0) within its main loop to determine whether to shut down.
That's a very general question, and there are some inconsistencies.
While it is a not 100% rule, most console applications run to completion, whereas GUI applications run until the user terminates them (And services run until stopped via the SCM). Hence, it's easier to request a GUI to close. You send them the equivalent of Alt-F4. But for a console program, you have to send them the equivalent of Ctrl-C and hope they handle it. In both cases, you simply wait. If the process sticks around, you then shoot it down (TerminateProcess) and pray that the damage is limited. But your HDD can fill up with temporary files.
GUI application in general do not have exit codes - where would they go? And a console process that is forcefully terminated by definition does not exit, so it has no exit code. So, in a server shutdown scenario, don't expect exit codes.
If you've got a debugger attached, you generally can't shutdown the process from another application. That would make it impossible for debuggers to debug exit code!