Re: [mp2] mod_perl closes apache's stdin and/or stdout

This never got a response. Which surprises me, since I think it is a  
legitimate and nasty bug.

So is the silence because
1) people don't think it's really a bug
2) people glazed over while reading the description
3) ??

Thanks :)
Jon

On Jan 8, 2010, at 6:15 AM, Jonathan Swartz wrote:

> (A continuation of:
> http://marc.info/?l=apache-modperl&m=117507879929572&w=2
> http://marc.info/?l=apache-modperl&m=119072925228529&w=2
> )
>
> I've just spent many frustrating days debugging a situation that  
> turned out to be caused by mod_perl's closing of file descriptor 1  
> (STDOUT).
>
> Here's the reproducible case I ultimately got it down to. Using  
> mod_perl 2, with a dead-simple configuration and this handler:
>
>   use DBI;
>   sub handler {
>       my $dbh = DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:$database", $user, $pass,  
> { RaiseError => 1 } );
>       system('echo "hello"');
>       eval { $dbh->do("select 1") };
>       print "dbh - " . ( $@ ? "error: $@\n" : "ok" ) . "\n";
>       return 0;
>   }
>
> This outputs:
>
>   dbh - error: DBD::mysql::db do failed: Lost connection to MySQL  
> server during query at...
>
> The DBI connection dies because mod_perl closes fd 1 (STDOUT). So  
> the next open - in this case the remote mysql connection created by  
> DBI - gets fd 1. The child process created by system() writes  
> innocently to STDOUT, which goes to our mysql socket, causing havoc.
>
> We can confirm this by inserting this at the beginning of the handler:
>
>   sub handler {
>        open(my $fh, ">/dev/null");
>        print "fh - " . fileno($fh) . "\n";
>        ...
>
> Now this outputs:
>
>   fh - 1
>   dbh - ok
>
> The initial open grabs fd 1, which means that DBI gets a different  
> fd, and the connection doesn't die.
>
> Now this example is contrived, but replace 'echo "hello"' with any  
> innocuous system() or backtick call that accidentally sends a bit of  
> output to STDOUT, and you can see how this would cause all kinds of  
> baffling bugs. In my case, it was originally a call to "sendmail"  
> that intermittently sent a warning to STDOUT, and thus destroyed our  
> first database connection. It worked fine in mod_perl 1, but started  
> breaking when we upgraded to mod_perl 2.
>
> Is there really no way to fix this in mod_perl, perhaps by  
> automatically opening a /dev/null handle as I did above? Other  
> future developers will surely endure the same hours of frustration I  
> did if it is left alone.
>
> Thanks
> Jon
>