epoll_wait() receives socket closed twice (read()/recv() returns 0)

We have an application that uses epoll to listen and process http-connections. Sometimes epoll_wait() receives close event on fd twice in a "row". Meaning: epoll_wait() returns connection fd on which read()/recv() returns 0. This is a problem, since I have malloc:ed pointer saved in epoll_event struct (struct epoll_event.data.ptr) and which is freed when fd(socket) is detected as closed the first time. Second time it crashes.

This problem occurs very rarely in real use (except one site, which actually has around 500-1000 users per server). I can replicate the problem using http siege with >1000 simultaneous connections per second. In this case application segfaults (because of invalid pointer) very randomly, sometimes after few seconds, usually after tens of minutes. I have been able to replicate the problem with fewer connections per second, but for that I have to run the application a long time, many days, even weeks.

All new accept() connection fd:s are set as non-blocking and added to epoll as one-shot, edge-triggering and waiting for read() to be available. So somewhy when the server load is high, epoll thinks that my application didn't get the close-event and queues new one?

epoll_wait() is running in it's own thread and queues fd events to be handled elsewhere. I noticed that there was multiple closes incoming with simple code that checks if there comes event twice in a row from epoll to same fd. It did happen and the events where both closes (recv(.., MSG_PEEK) told this to me :)).

epoll fd is created:

epoll_create(1024);

epoll_wait() is run as follows:

epoll_wait(epoll_fd, events, 256, 300);

new fd is set as non-blocking after accept():

int flags = fcntl(fd, F_GETFL, 0);
err = fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, flags | O_NONBLOCK);

new fd is added to epoll (client is malloc:ed struct pointer):

static struct epoll_event ev;
ev.events = EPOLLIN | EPOLLONESHOT | EPOLLET;
ev.data.ptr = client;
err = epoll_ctl(epoll_fd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, client->fd, &ev);

And after receiving and handling data from fd, it is re-armed (of course since EPOLLONESHOT). At first I wasn'开发者_JAVA百科t using edge-triggering and non-blocking io, but I tested it and got a nice perfomance boost using those. This problem existed before adding them though. Btw. shutdown(fd, SHUT_RDWR) is used on other threads to trigger proper close event to be received trough epoll when the server needs to close the fd because of some http-error etc (I don't actually know if this is the right way to do it, but it has worked perfectly).

---

As soon as the first read() returns 0, this means that the connection was closed by the peer. Why does the kernel generate a EPOLLIN event for this case? Well, there's no other way to indicate the socket's closure when you're only subscribed to EPOLLIN. You can add EPOLLRDHUP which is basically the same as checking for read() returning 0. However, make sure to test for this flag before you test for EPOLLIN.

  if (flag & EPOLLRDHUP) {
     /* Connection was closed. */
     deleteConnectionData(...);
     close(fd); /* Will unregister yourself from epoll. */
     return;
  }

  if (flag & EPOLLIN) {
    readData(...);
  }

  if (flag & EPOLLOUT) {
    writeData(...);
  }

The way I've ordered these blocks is relevant and the return for EPOLLRDHUP is important too, because it is likely that deleteConnectionData() may have destroyed internal structures. As EPOLLIN is set as well in case of a closure, this could lead to some problems. Ignoring EPOLLIN is safe because it won't yield any data anyway. Same for EPOLLOUT as it's never sent in conjunction with EPOLLRDHUP!

---

epoll_wait() is running in it's own thread and queues fd events to be handled elsewhere. ... So why when the server load is high, epoll thinks that my application didn't get the close-event and queues new one?

Assuming that EPOLLONESHOT is bug free (I haven't searched for associated bugs though), the fact that you are processing your epoll events in another thread and that it crashes sporadically or under heavy load may mean that there is a race condition somewhere in your application.

May be the object pointed to by epoll_event.data.ptr gets deallocated prematurely before the epoll event is unregistered in another thread when you server does an active close of the client connection.

My first try would be to run it under valgrind and see if it reports any errors.

---

I would re-check myself against the following sections from epoll(7):

Q6

Will closing a file descriptor cause it to be removed from all epoll sets automatically?

and

o If using an event cache...

There're some good points there.

---

Removing EPOLLONESHOT made the problem disappear after few other changes. Unfortunately I'm not totally sure what caused it. Using EPOLLONESHOT with threads and adding the fd again manually into the epoll queue was quite certainly the problem. Also the data pointer in epoll struct is released after a delay. Works perfectly now.

---

Register Signal 0x2000 for Remote host closed connection ex ev.events = EPOLLIN | EPOLLONESHOT | EPOLLET | 0x2000 and check if (flag & 0x2000) for Remote Host Close Connection