[erlang-questions] Process surviving disconnect

[Vincenzo Maggio]

Hello,
I think something is wrong here.
>  Bob die of noconnection.

This is printed by 
>  		{'EXIT', Bob, Reason} ->
>  			io:format ("Bob died of ~p.~n", [Reason] ),

So alice is in fact receiving bob last death cry :D and process_flag translate it in a message instead of transmitting exit signal to alice; I think this is ok from the point of view of Alice, so the real problem is that bob is dying (I know it's mundane, but I learned not to make assumption).
Mmm, well I don't know if having no more a connection between the process makes Erlang VM do some assumption of a virtual master node.
Well, if you want my opinion, I think that you should file a bug on the Erlang bugs mailing list if no one comes up with a proper explanation.
Even if what we're thinking is wrong and this is not a bug, in the past I had a problem on node lookup and they resolved it.
These are my two cents, but if you can please let me know if there are further updates 'cause it's a really interesting problem.

BTW, before filing a bug, could you please substitute spawn_link with spawn_monitor and remove the process_flag lines? It would be interesting to understand if either bob dies on its own or it's killed by no more being able to communicate with alice.

Vincenzo

> Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:57:35 -0600
> From: erlang@REDACTED
> To: maggio.vincenzo@REDACTED
> CC: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: RE: [erlang-questions] Process surviving disconnect
> 
>  Thank you very much Vincenzo. You affirmed my assertion that Bob should 
>  survive the disconnect.
>  Nevertheless he dies.
>  I will point out exactly what I do and maybe someone can spot the error 
>  in my code, my setup or my thinking and tell me what I am doing wrong.
> 
>  I start a node on gca.local:
>  unroot@REDACTED:~$ erl -name 'bob@REDACTED' -setcookie 123
> 
>  I start a node on usa.local:
>  unroot@REDACTED:~$ erl -name 'alice@REDACTED' -setcookie 123
> 
>  I start sasl on bob@REDACTED:
>  (bob@REDACTED)1> application:start (sasl).
> 
>  I run alice:start/0 on alice@REDACTED:
>  (alice@REDACTED)1> alice:start ().
>  true
> 
>  I look for bob on bob@REDACTED and save its pid:
>  (bob@REDACTED)2> whereis (bob).
>  <0.65.0>
>  (bob@REDACTED)3> Pid = whereis (bob).
>  <0.65.0>
> 
>  I cut the network cable and wait a minute for the timeout.
> 
>  On alice@REDACTED I get the following output:
>  =ERROR REPORT==== 17-Aug-2011::10:53:21 ===
>  ** Node 'bob@REDACTED' not responding **
>  ** Removing (timedout) connection **
>  Bob die of noconnection.
> 
>  Nice, Alice trapped Bob's death and reported it. I check for Alice:
>  (alice@REDACTED)2> whereis (alice).
>  <0.42.0>
> 
>  Alice is up and running.
> 
>  On bob@REDACTED I get the following output:
>  =ERROR REPORT==== 17-Aug-2011::10:53:10 ===
>  ** Node 'alice@REDACTED' not responding **
>  ** Removing (timedout) connection **
> 
>  But Bob is dead:
>  (bob@REDACTED)4> whereis (bob).
>  undefined
>  (bob@REDACTED)5> is_process_alive (Pid).
>  false
> 
>  I really do not understand what is happening.
> 
> 
>  Thank you in advance
> 
>  Anchise
> 
>  Here goes the code I used:
> 
>  -module (alice).
>  -compile (export_all).
> 
>  start () -> register (alice, spawn (fun init/0) ).
> 
>  stop () -> whereis (alice) ! stop.
> 
>  init () ->
>  	process_flag (trap_exit, true),
>  	Bob = spawn_link ('bob@REDACTED', bob, start, [self () ] ),
>  	loop (Bob).
> 
>  loop (Bob) ->
>  	receive
>  		stop -> ok;
>  		{'EXIT', Bob, Reason} ->
>  			io:format ("Bob died of ~p.~n", [Reason] ),
>  			loop (Bob);
>  		Msg ->
>  			io:format ("Alice received ~p.~n", [Msg] ),
>  			loop (Bob)
>  	end.
> 
> 
>  -module (bob).
>  -compile (export_all).
> 
>  start (Alice) ->
>  	process_flag (trap_exit, true),
>  	register (bob, self () ),
>  	loop (Alice).
> 
>  loop (Alice) ->
>  	receive
>  		stop -> ok;
>  		{'EXIT', Alice, Reason} ->
>  			io:format ("Alice died of ~p.~n", [Reason] ),
>  			loop (Alice);
>  		Msg ->
>  			io:format ("Bob received ~p.~n", [Msg] ),
>  			loop (Alice)
>  	end.
> 
> 
>  On Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:47:02 +0200, Vincenzo Maggio wrote:
> > Hello,
> > without further info a debug is rather difficult.
> > But let's try to at least start analysis of the problem:
> >
> >>   - Has this something to do that I initially spawn Bob from the 
> >> Alice
> >>  node?
> >
> > Absolutely not: this would hit the very foundation of Erlang, process
> > referential transparency. When a process is started is a brand new,
> > clean entity (indeed, default process heap space is always the same
> > size!).
> >
> >>   - How can I make Bob to survive a connection loss?
> >
> > Look above: it SHOULD survive.
> >
> > Can you please start SASL (application:start(sasl) from the shell)
> > and see if shell log puts some further information?
> >
> > Vincenzo
> 
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20110817/ee353714/attachment.htm>