[Spice-devel] More on xspice + failure in net ping over vpn

[Alon Levy]

On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 11:36:55AM -0500, Jeremy White wrote:
> So I've probed more deeply after my naive misunderstanding
> of the consequence of the EAGAIN.
> 
> I believe I am closer to the source of the problem; I also
> believe the problem is more serious than I realized; it's likely to bite
> anyone trying the xspice solution quite hard.
> 
> That is, in spiceqxl_main_loop.c in the qxl X driver, there
> is a basic implementation of watch_add/watch_update_mask.
> The watch stuff is vital to retrying sends when they don't
> go out due to a blocking condition.
> 
> However, that implementation does not function fully.  It relies
> on client activity on the X server to trigger a select polling
> loop.  But when sending the large initial network ping packet,
> we have no client activity, and we just hang.  The attached
> patch 'improves' things, but I really have no sense as to whether
> or not it would be a reliable solution.

OK, thanks for tracking this down.

> 
> I looked at trying to use the red_worker watch add stuff instead,
> and I see that gets hairy.  You need the watches before you
> have a channel; the red_worker stuff relies on having a channel
> to hang it's stuff off of.
> 
> But I have to confess it feels right - we've got our own thread;
> we created the socket, and do all the listens/accept - why don't we
> do our own watching?
> 

There is a thread for the display+cursor channel, but the rest are using
the main (and only) X server thread. Specifically the main channel,
which sends the ping message, is in that thread. I don't understand the
issue - is the select not being reached, or is it missing the spice fds?

> Cheers,
> 
> Jeremy

> diff --git a/src/spiceqxl_main_loop.c b/src/spiceqxl_main_loop.c
> index 1718861..b06d5eb 100644
> --- a/src/spiceqxl_main_loop.c
> +++ b/src/spiceqxl_main_loop.c
> @@ -317,7 +317,7 @@ static void select_and_check_watches(void)
>  
>  static void xspice_wakeup_handler(pointer data, int nfds, pointer readmask)
>  {
> -    if (!nfds) {
> +    if (!nfds && ring_is_empty(&watches)) {
>          return;
>      }
>      select_and_check_watches();

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