[erlang-bugs] Weird behaviour of gen_tcp:send/2 and erlang:port_command/3 with nosuspend to the same port on R16B03

[Vasily Demidenok]

Hello list, we faced with some gen_tcp related problems after switch from
erlang R15B03 to R16B03-01

The problem is as following: When server produce data faster then consumer
can handle, after
the out server's buffers are full and incoming client's buffers are full
gen_tcp:send/2 call on server side blocks forever in
erts_internal:port_command/3. After this, even when client consumes all
the data and the buffers are empty server process remains to be suspended
in that call

This problem does not occur always, but quite often.

Some details on implementation are below, I also shrink the example to
this small app so you can check the code:
https://github.com/define-null/tcp_failing_ex

Server is implemented in such a way, that it listen on 8899 port, then when
client connect to it spawn main srv process and plenty of workers, which
start to write to this port after client send some special msg. The main
process is responsible for commands from the client and send responses via
gen_tcp:send/2, while workers try to write some stream data to the client
and use erang:port_command with no-suspend. So workers send only up-to-date
data, dropping any in case client is slow.

The behaviour which we see is as following:
At first phase producer fills OS and erlang driver's buffers. Consumer read
data as it arrives and server drop data which it cannot send. So we see
buffer size growing on both side out queue of the server and in queue of
the client respectively

After some moment in time, i guess when the buffers are completely filled,
server try respond to
ping message of the client, using gen_tcp:send/2 call. After that, it
blocks there forever, even after client consumes all the messages. The
situation does not change and the srv process remains in the suspended
state, while it's incoming buffer begins to grow when client send more ping
messages.

Below is the output on the system with two slow clients, where for the
first client server's process is already blocked in gen_tcp:send/2 call,
while the second is served well.

Every 2.0s: netstat -al | grep 8899
                                                                      Tue
Jun 24 16:34:51 2014

tcp4      36      0  localhost.8899         localhost.63263
 ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0       0  localhost.63263        localhost.8899
ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0 130990  localhost.8899         localhost.63257
 ESTABLISHED
tcp4  619190   0  localhost.63257        localhost.8899         ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0       0  *.8899                 *.*                    LISTEN

This is the output for the client process from github example, where we see
that
after send operation (ping msg) no incoming msg come any more.
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,28}}: msg
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,48}} before send
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,48}} after send ok
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,9}} before send
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,9}} after send ok
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,30}} before send
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,30}} after send ok
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,51}} before send
{{2014,6,24},{16,34,51}} after send ok
{{2014,6,24},{16,35,12}} before send
....

Server blocked process output:

{{2014,6,24},{16,33,21}}: <0.95.0> ping
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,21}} bsend: <0.95.0>
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,21}} asend: <0.95.0> ok
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,48}}: <0.95.0> ping
{{2014,6,24},{16,33,48}} bsend: <0.95.0>
%% (no asend message after it)

(tcp_failing_node@REDACTED)1> erlang:process_info(pid(0,95,0)).
[{current_function,{erts_internal,port_command,3}},
 {initial_call,{proc_lib,init_p,5}},

Bug is not always reproducible, but occurs quite often. The problem is that
even
after server's out buffers are empty data does not arrive to the client,
and incoming buffer grow
as client send ping messages to the server. (So erlang:port_command/3 with
no-suspend always return false
when another main server process for this connection is suspended in
gen_tcp:send/2)

And then it's getting only worse as already mentioned

Every 2.0s: netstat -al | grep 8899
                                                                      Tue
Jun 24 16:56:59 2014

tcp4     804      0  localhost.8899         localhost.63263
 ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0      0  localhost.63263        localhost.8899
ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0      0  localhost.8899         localhost.63257
 ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0      0  localhost.63257        localhost.8899
ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0      0  *.8899                 *.*                    LISTEN

We faced with this after switching to R16B03 from R15B03, I know there were
some changes in port_command handling, i guess why we got such behaviour?
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