help with concurrency control (threads/processes & signals)

[Sori Schwimmer]

Hi,

I am working on an application which involves
interprocess communication. More to the point,
processes should be able to notify other processes
about certain situations, so the "notifyees" would be
able to act in certain ways.

As processes are distributed on several machines, in
different physical locations, my thinking was:
a) set a message manager (MM)
b) all the participants will register with MM, so MM
will have their host address and their pid on host
c) when someone needs to send a notification, it is
sent to MM, and MM it's doing the job

To start with, I created processes, psrv.py and
clnt.py, and tried to sketch the above scenario.

Here is the server, psrv.py:


#! /usr/bin/python

from socket import *
from os import *
from signal import *
from cPickle import *
#import pdb
import thread

#pdb.set_trace()

def process(ms):
    global c,regtab,mssgs
    print 'ms[0]=',ms[0]
    if ms[0]=='0':
      regtab.append(ms[1])
      mssgs.append([])
    elif ms[0]=='1':
      for i in range(len(regtab)):
        mssgs[i].append(ms[1])
        kill(regtab[i],SIGUSR1)
    elif ms[0]=='2':
      for i in range(len(regtab)):
        if regtab[i]!=ms[2]:
          mssgs[i].append(ms[1])
          kill(regtab[i],SIGUSR1)
    elif ms[0]=='3':
      print 'executing ms[0]==3'
      for i in range(len(regtab)):
        if regtab[i]==ms[1]:
          c,p=s.accept()
          for j in mssgs[i]:
            c.send(dumps(j,True))
          c.close()
    print 'connection closed'

regtab=[]
mssgs=[]

s=socket()
s.bind(('127.0.0.1',9691))
s.listen(5)

while True:
  print 'listening ...'
  c,p=s.accept()
  while True:
    m=c.recv(1024)
    if not m: break
    ms=loads(m)
  c.close()

  thread.start_new_thread(process,(ms,))
# ***************************************************

And here is the client side, clnt.py:


#! /usr/bin/python

from socket import *
from os import *
from signal import *
from cPickle import *
#import pdb

#pdb.set_trace()

def k3(a,b):
  print 'Executing k3'
  s=socket()
  s.connect(('127.0.0.1',9691))
  s.send(dumps(('3',getpid()),True))
  while True:
    print '"3" sent'
    m1=s.recv(1024)
    print m1
    if not m1: break
    m=loads(m1)
  s.close()
  print 'connection closed in k3'
  print 'm is ',m

signal(SIGUSR1,k3)

m=''
k=raw_input()
while k!='4':
  s=socket()
  s.connect(('127.0.0.1',9691))
  if k=='0':
    s.send(dumps(('0',getpid()),True))
  elif k=='1':
    s.send(dumps(('1','For all'),True))
  elif k=='2':
    s.send(dumps(('2','For some',getpid()),True))
  elif k=='3':
    s.send(dumps(('3',getpid()),True))
    while True:
      m1=s.recv(1024)
      if not m1: break
      m=loads(m1)
  s.close()
  print 'connection closed in main'
  print 'm is',m
  k=raw_input()
# ***************************************************


Comments: Clients register themselves with server by
sending a message of type '0'. If they want to
broadcast a message, clients will ask nicely the
server to do it for them through a message of type
'1'. The message is supposed to be kept in
eachclient's "mailbox", then the server should notify
each client by sending a SIGUSR1 signal, and then
waiting for each clientto ask for its own copy of the
notification. When a client is ready to do it, will
just send a message of type '3' to the server.
Messages of type '2' are just a variation of type '1'
which dosen't include the sender in the list of
receivers.

My first version was forking a new process in the
server to serve requests, but I soon realized that, as
each process receives a copy of the original data,
updating the "mailboxes" won't work (the "mailboxes"
updated are local copies). In the threads version the
"mailboxes" are shared, but so are the sockets, which
will force me to add some locks and make sure that an
open socket in the server will talk only with a
certain client.

For the moment I am toying with one server, and one
client. Still, it is not working as expected. '0' goes
through, so does'1', but not '3' ('3' as a result of
'1', or '3' requested from keyboard).

Life is a struggle. Programming in Python shouldn't
be. Ergo, I'm doing something wrong.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Sorin

Environment: Gentoo Linux, Python 2.4.1


		
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