[erlang-questions] Working around the Windows firewall

[Antoine Koener]

Just to share my small experience with uds_dist: last time I've checked,
everything was fine but the distribution was not working at all.
Pipes were OK, but the distribution wasn't.
The problem seems to be related to some obscure flag in the structure.
I think this code may have worked with old version of erlang < R13...



On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Patrik Nyblom <pan@REDACTED> wrote:

>  On 12/24/2012 01:07 AM, Jeffrey Rennie wrote:
>
>  Before I draft a formal EEP,****
>
> ** **
>
> Windows firewall is enabled by default, and blocks sockets used by
> erlang.  Yes, exceptions can be added to the firewall, however, this is not
> possible in some situations.  For example:****
>
> 1.  A corporate network with strict policies that prohibit opening ports
> used by erlang.****
>
> 2.  An application written in erlang that installs without administrator
> privileges.****
>
> 3.  (A generalization of the above)  Whenever the user who wants to run
> erlang is not an administrator.****
>
> ** **
>
> In these environments, an alternative to sockets which get entangled in
> the firewall, is Win32 named pipes which do not get entangled in  the
> firewall.****
>
> ** **
>
> Therefore, I propose a change that will allow erlang nodes to communicate
> over named pipes in addition to sockets.  Of course, it would be controlled
> by command-line parameters.****
>
> ** **
>
> I've spent a day browsing the erlang source code and it looks pretty
> doable.****
>
> ** **
>
> Comments and questions please.
>
>
> Good idea! There is actually no need to change anything in the Erlang VM
> to do that. The distribution mechanism is pluggable, so you can write a
> driver that uses any protocol where you can setup a stream of bytes between
> nodes (ok, that sounds easier than it really is, but it's absolutely
> doable). There is an example in the kernel source code
> ($ERL_TOP/lib/kernel/examples/uds_dist) where distribution is set up using
> Unix named pipes, which is of course more limited, but shows the general
> idea of how to implement a distribution driver.
>
>  ****
>
> ** **
>
> P.S. It took me about 5 hours to successfully build on Windows; I had most
> of the tools like Visual Studio and cygwin installed.  I got tripped up by
> git switching LFs to CRLFs, which chokes bash.  Also, it's much faster to
> just run vcvars32.bat and then run bash than to write your own script that
> sets the vc environment variables.****
>
> Yes, it's a pain. The CRLF defaults of msysgit is also a pain. Using
> vcvars32 directly may definitely be a shortcut, maybe you could add some
> section to the windows readme about your approach?
>
>  ** **
>
>  Cheers,
> /Patrik
>
>
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