passing a socket to a spawned process.

[Michael Loritsch]

Josiah Carlson <jcarlson at uci.edu> wrote in message news:<mailman.4761.1097598633.5135.python-list at python.org>...
> > Is it possible?  In the parent process, I have a socket that binds,
> > listens and then accepts new connections (which creates new sockets in
> > the process).  I want to be able to pass some of these new sockets to
> > a spawned process.  Is it possible, and if so how?
> > 
> > Any help is much appreciated!!
> 
> As someone has already mentioned, if you have the socket before the fork,
> you will have the socket after the fork.
> 
> 
> I had been working on a general file descriptor passing mechanism for a
> few weeks in May, until I gave up.
> 
> From what I was able to work out, it is not possible in Windows.
> SunOS 5.8 has no issues, and will work almost out of the box (pure
> Python) with the right incantation (I have it somewhere if you really
> want it).
> A few constants are missing from the Linux fcntl.py, so this is not
> really possible unless you are willing to patch your kernel and Python.
> 
> Googling for the terms: passing file descriptors Python
> will get you the list of articles/research that I looked at.
> 
> One of those links has source code for the C struct usable with a BSD
> for making this happen.  Generally though, you can only pass file
> descriptors (sockets) across a UNIX domain socket, or sometimes a pipe
> (make it before you fork).
> 
> 
> Good luck.
>  - Josiah


Passing sockets to spawned processes is also possible in Windows, but
tricky.

While I have never passed a socket between python processes, I have
passed a socket handle from a python process to a Windows binary. 
Using the win32api extensions packaged with the ActiveState
distribution, one should be able to pass the socket between python
processes just as well.

The basic pseudo-code for doing so is as follows:

Parent process:
1) Obtain socket connection in parent server process from a client
process.
2) Obtain Windows process id -> use win32api.GetCurrentProcessId()
   - This process id will later be sent to the child process.
3) Spawn child process, obtaining a pipe to child_stdin -> use one of
the os.popen functions.
4) Using child_stdin pass parent process id (obtained in 2) to the
child process.
5) Next, using child_stdin pass over the socket file id, using
socket.fileno().

Now the child process should have everything it needs to listen on the
socket.

Child process:
1) Read parent process id from stdin.
2) Read socket file id from stdin.
3) Obtain a handle to the parent process using the process id -> use
win32api.OpenProcess().  This handle will be needed in the next
call...
4) Turn your socket file id into a socket -> use
win32api.DuplicateHandle().
   - hSourceProcess is the handle obtained in 3
   - hSource is the file id

You are now done, and should be able to read data on the socket in the
child process!

Regards,

Michael Loritsch