THTTPApplication blocked by telnet connection

[zeljko]

Hi,
Created small test app with THTTPApplication (actually it's sqldbrestbridge app with 3 endpoints), threaded := true, ssl=true etc, and everything works as expected and scales pretty good.
Connecting to my server with telnet myserver.org 51235 shows telnet prompt:
Connected to myserver.org.
Escape character is '^]'.

And thats' fine, but while telnet is waiting for input, other clients cannot connect to the server ?!? it blocks server to accept new connections while telnet app is connected. I don't know how to use OnAllowConnect and discard such connection, or at least free socket for another connection, in that case telnet can wait ....

[MarkMLl]

That's an interesting one... I wrote my own Telnet code a few months ago to allow me to expunge LNet and can't for the life of me remember what I did for multiple connections.

Slightly later: OK, I made no attempt to use SSL and I've fixed the backlog parameter to fpListen() to be 1. My intention was very much to make the facility available as a debugging interface, or potentially to control a planetarium projector etc. so that was just about acceptable.

I think the big question is whether the library/component authors anticipated (or even knew about) the possibility that a user might connect via Telnet, or if they assumed that every connection would be a rapid open-request-close.

MarkMLl

[Remy Lebeau]

And thats' fine, but while telnet is waiting for input, other clients cannot connect to the server ?!? it blocks server to accept new connections while telnet app is connected.

It would be very odd for an HTTP server to allow only 1 client connection at a time.  Do you have the same problem using an actual HTTP client with HTTP keep-alives enabled?  Can only 1 request be serviced at a time?

[zeljko]

Just sent thousands of requests (32 virtual users) over postman and it works. Just one telnet connection and server waits until that telnet connection interrupted by client app, when telnet session is killed, postman requests work again.
EDIT: fpc-3.3.1 trunk.

[zeljko]

And thats' fine, but while telnet is waiting for input, other clients cannot connect to the server ?!? it blocks server to accept new connections while telnet app is connected.

It would be very odd for an HTTP server to allow only 1 client connection at a time.  Do you have the same problem using an actual HTTP client with HTTP keep-alives enabled?  Can only 1 request be serviced at a time?

Problem is that connection isn't passed to any of http* components at all. I can see it only in TInetServer.OnAcceptConnect, it does not hit InitRequest, HandleRequest or anything http* related.

[zeljko]

Found that problem is in ssl_accept() which blocks forever on eg telnet connection, no idea how to fix this (opensslsockets.pp function TOpenSSLSocketHandler.Accept: Boolean). Maybe using select() ? Any ideas ?

[zeljko]

Ok, solved by using fpAlarm() inside TOpenSSLSocketHandler.Accept...don't know if it's best solution but it works

[Remy Lebeau]

Found that problem is in ssl_accept() which blocks forever on eg telnet connection

Makes sense, but even so, I would still expect the HTTP server to be able to accept other clients while the Telnet client is blocked.

[zeljko]

Gnutls have ability to timeout handshake for such connections, but openssl  does not, so as I can see by googling alarm is one of the solutions (unix only, don't know if there's anything like fpAlarm on windows)