[erlang-questions] Cast versus Call and timeouts

[Bryan]

Hi Everyone,

I was hoping to better understand an interesting condition I recently encountered, and was able to alleviate though I am not 100% clear why.

In our system, we have two types of main processes: for simplicity sake, lets just call them groups (A) and endpoints (B). Each of the processes are implemented as gen_servers.

Process A implements functionality and represents a group of endpoints. These endpoints are then each instantiated as a process B. Each endpoint can then be in multiple groups. If I have two groups, then I will have two A processes. If I have five endpoints, I will then have five B processes. In our example, endpoint process #3 is a member in groups one and two.

The system is very simple. If a change occurs in A, a message is then sent to each endpoint process B that is a member. In our example, group #1 process would send a message to five endpoint processes. If a change occurs in the endpoint process B, a message is sent to each group process A it is a member of. In our example, if this is endpoint #3, it sends a message to both group one and two.

Seems simple enough. My interesting condition that I ran into was where one of the messages from the group process A to the endpoint process B was a cast. All others for both gen_servers are calls. When A sent the cast message to B, B simply updates its state. For reasons that are not clear to me, this ultimately reaches a timeout state, where all the processes start timing out, even though there are no calling/casting cycles.

I know that calling cycles introduce a deadlock condition, but I trying to understand why a cast, which is suppose to return immediately and be handled asynchronously would produce a timeout?

When I move this message from a cast to a call, the system works perfectly.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Bryan

----

Bryan Hughes
Go Factory

http://www.go-factory.net

Connecting the Internet of Things

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