Re: plperl crash with Debian 6 (64 bit), pl/perlu, libwww and https

On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 10:28 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Hannu Krosing <hannu@krosing.net> writes:
> > On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 09:42 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >> On 08/04/2011 09:07 AM, Hannu Krosing wrote:
> >>> The crash is related to something leaving begind a bad SIGALARM handler,
> 
> >> So doesn't this look like a bug in the perl module that sets the signal 
> >> handler and doesn't restore it?
> >> I think if you use a perl module that monkeys with the signal handlers 
> >> for any signal postgres uses all bets are off.
> 
> > Sure, but how expensive would it be for pl/perl to do this
> > automatically ?
> 
> How can anything like that possibly work with any reliability
> whatsoever?  If the signal comes in, you don't know whether it was
> triggered by the event Postgres expected, or the event the perl module
> expected, and hence there's no way to deliver it to the right signal
> handler (not that the code you're describing is even trying to do that).
> 
> What *I'd* like is a way to prevent libperl from touching the host
> application's signal handlers at all.  Sadly, Perl does not actually
> think of itself as an embedded library, and therefore thinks it owns all
> resources of the process and can diddle them without anybody's
> permission.

It then seems that it is a goo idea to treat any fiddling with
postgreSQL signal handlers as an error, and rise an ERROR if any signal
handler has changed between calling the function and return, in a way
suggested by Alvaro

This at least forces the developer to pay attention and in case of
pl/perl function use something like the 
    {        local $SIG{ALRM};        # do LWP stuff here    }    return 'OK';

trick suggested by Andrew Dunstan

I know that this is not the real solution, bu at least it is easier to
debug than leaving a round signal handlers pointing to non-existent
code, which will trigger next time the deadlock checker tries to run.

-- 
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Hannu Krosing
PostgreSQL Infinite Scalability and Performance Consultant
PG Admin Book: http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/books/