In TCP, we don't want to forward chunks of data, we want to forward
indefinitely. This patch introduces a special value for the amount
of data to be forwarded. When buffer_forward() is called with
BUF_INFINITE_FORWARD, it configures the buffer to never stop
forwarding until the end.
The BF_EMPTY flag was once used to indicate an empty buffer. However,
it was used half the time as meaning the buffer is empty for the reader,
and half the time as meaning there is nothing left to send.
"nothing to send" is only indicated by "->send_max=0 && !pipe". Once
we fix this, we discover that the flag is not used anymore. So the
flags has been renamed BF_OUT_EMPTY and means exactly the condition
above, ie, there is nothing to send.
Doing so has allowed us to remove some unused tests for emptiness,
but also to uncover a certain amount of situations where the flag
was not correctly set or tested.
The BF_WRITE_ENA buffer flag became very complex to deal with, because
it was used to :
- enable automatic connection
- enable close forwarding
- enable data forwarding
The last point was not very true anymore since we introduced ->send_max,
but still the test remained everywhere. This was causing issues such as
impossibility to connect without forwarding data, impossibility to prevent
closing when data was forwarded, etc...
This patch clarifies the situation by getting rid of this multi-purpose
flag and replacing it with :
- data forwarding based only on ->send_max || ->pipe ;
- a new BF_AUTO_CONNECT flag to allow automatic connection and only
that ;
- ability to perform an automatic connection when ->send_max or ->pipe
indicate that data is waiting to leave the buffer ;
- a new BF_AUTO_CLOSE flag to let the producer automatically set the
BF_SHUTW_NOW flag when it gets a BF_SHUTR.
During this cleanup, it was discovered that some tests were performed
twice, or that the BF_HIJACK flag was still tested, which is not needed
anymore since ->send_max replcaed it. These places have been fixed too.
These cleanups have also revealed a few areas where the other flags
such as BF_EMPTY are not cleanly used. This will be an opportunity for
a second patch.
By inlining this function and slightly reordering it, we can double
the getchar/putchar test throughput, and reduce its footprint by about
40 bytes. Also, it was the only non-inlined char-based function, which
now makes it more consistent this time.
This function is used to cut the "tail" of a buffer, which means strip it
to the length of unsent data only, and kill any remaining unsent data. Any
scheduled forwarding is stopped. This is mainly to be used to send error
messages after existing data. It does the same as buffer_erase() for buffers
without pending outgoing data.
The computations in buffer_forward() were only valid if buffer_forward()
was used on a buffer which had no more data scheduled for forwarding.
This is always the case right now so this bug is not yet triggered but
it will soon be. Now we correctly discount the bytes to be forwarded
from the data already present in the buffer.
This function works like a traditional putchar() except that it
can return 0 if the output buffer is full.
Now a basic character-based echo function would look like this, from
a stream interface :
while (1) {
c = buffer_si_peekchar(req);
if (c < 0)
break;
if (!buffer_si_putchar(res, c)) {
si->flags |= SI_FL_WAIT_ROOM;
break;
}
buffer_skip(req, 1);
req->flags |= BF_WRITE_PARTIAL;
res->flags |= BF_READ_PARTIAL;
}
The buffer_si_peekline() function is sort of a fgets() to be used from a
stream interface. It returns a complete line whenever possible, and does
not update the buffer's pointer, so that the reader is free to consume
what it wants to.
buffer_si_peekchar() only returns one character, and also needs a call
to buffer_skip() once the character is definitely consumed.
This functions act like their buffer_write*() counter-parts,
except that they're specifically designed to be used from a
stream interface handler, as they carefully check size limits
and automatically advance the read pointer depending on the
to_forward attribute.
buffer_feed_chunk() is an inline calling buffer_feed() as both
are the sames. For this reason, buffer_write_chunk() has also
been turned into an inline which calls buffer_write().
buffer_contig_space(), buffer_contig_data() and buffer_skip()
provide easy methods to extract/insert data from/into a buffer.
buffer_write() and buffer_write_chunk() currently do not check
max_len nor to_forward, so they will quickly become embarrassing
to use or will need an equivalent. The reason is that they are
used to build error messages which currently are not subject to
analysis.
The first step towards dynamic buffer size consists in removing
all static definitions of the buffer size. Instead, we store a
buffer's size in itself. Right now they're all preinitialized
to BUFSIZE, but we will change that.
Using pipe pools makes pipe management a lot easier. It also allows to
remove quite a bunch of #ifdefs in areas which depended on the presence
or not of support for kernel splicing.
The buffer now holds a pointer to a pipe structure which is always NULL
except if there are still data in the pipe. When it needs to use that
pipe, it dynamically allocates it from the pipe pool. When the data is
consumed, the pipe is immediately released.
That way, there is no need anymore to care about pipe closure upon
session termination, nor about pipe creation when trying to use
splice().
Another immediate advantage of this method is that it considerably
reduces the number of pipes needed to use splice(). Tests have shown
that even with 0.2 pipe per connection, almost all sessions can use
splice(), because the same pipe may be used by several consecutive
calls to splice().
When CONFIG_HAP_LINUX_SPLICE is defined, the buffer structure will be
slightly enlarged to support information needed for kernel splicing
on Linux.
A first attempt consisted in putting this information into the stream
interface, but in the long term, it appeared really awkward. This
version puts the information into the buffer. The platform-dependant
part is conditionally added and will only enlarge the buffers when
compiled in.
One new flag has also been added to the buffers: BF_KERN_SPLICING.
It indicates that the application considers it is appropriate to
use splicing to forward remaining data.
In the buffers, the read limit used to leave some place for header
rewriting was set by a pointer to the end of the buffer. Not only
this required subtracts at every place in the code, but this will
also soon not be usable anymore when we want to support keepalive.
Let's replace this with a length limit, comparable to the buffer's
length. This has also sightly reduced the code size.
The way the buffers and stream interfaces handled ->to_forward was
really not handy for multiple reasons. Now we've moved its control
to the receive-side of the buffer, which is also responsible for
keeping send_max up to date. This makes more sense as it now becomes
possible to send some pre-formatted data followed by forwarded data.
The following explanation has also been added to buffer.h to clarify
the situation. Right now, tests show that the I/O is behaving extremely
well. Some work will have to be done to adapt existing splice code
though.
/* Note about the buffer structure
The buffer contains two length indicators, one to_forward counter and one
send_max limit. First, it must be understood that the buffer is in fact
split in two parts :
- the visible data (->data, for ->l bytes)
- the invisible data, typically in kernel buffers forwarded directly from
the source stream sock to the destination stream sock (->splice_len
bytes). Those are used only during forward.
In order not to mix data streams, the producer may only feed the invisible
data with data to forward, and only when the visible buffer is empty. The
consumer may not always be able to feed the invisible buffer due to platform
limitations (lack of kernel support).
Conversely, the consumer must always take data from the invisible data first
before ever considering visible data. There is no limit to the size of data
to consume from the invisible buffer, as platform-specific implementations
will rarely leave enough control on this. So any byte fed into the invisible
buffer is expected to reach the destination file descriptor, by any means.
However, it's the consumer's responsibility to ensure that the invisible
data has been entirely consumed before consuming visible data. This must be
reflected by ->splice_len. This is very important as this and only this can
ensure strict ordering of data between buffers.
The producer is responsible for decreasing ->to_forward and increasing
->send_max. The ->to_forward parameter indicates how many bytes may be fed
into either data buffer without waking the parent up. The ->send_max
parameter says how many bytes may be read from the visible buffer. Thus it
may never exceed ->l. This parameter is updated by any buffer_write() as
well as any data forwarded through the visible buffer.
The consumer is responsible for decreasing ->send_max when it sends data
from the visible buffer, and ->splice_len when it sends data from the
invisible buffer.
A real-world example consists in part in an HTTP response waiting in a
buffer to be forwarded. We know the header length (300) and the amount of
data to forward (content-length=9000). The buffer already contains 1000
bytes of data after the 300 bytes of headers. Thus the caller will set
->send_max to 300 indicating that it explicitly wants to send those data,
and set ->to_forward to 9000 (content-length). This value must be normalised
immediately after updating ->to_forward : since there are already 1300 bytes
in the buffer, 300 of which are already counted in ->send_max, and that size
is smaller than ->to_forward, we must update ->send_max to 1300 to flush the
whole buffer, and reduce ->to_forward to 8000. After that, the producer may
try to feed the additional data through the invisible buffer using a
platform-specific method such as splice().
*/
In preparation of splice support, let's add the splice_len member
to the buffer struct. An earlier implementation made it conditional,
which made the whole logics very complex due to a large number of
ifdefs.
Now BF_EMPTY is only set once both buf->l and buf->splice_len are
null. Splice_len is initialized to zero during buffer creation and
is currently not changed, so the whole logics remains unaffected.
When splice gets merged, splice_len will reflect the number of bytes
in flight out of the buffer but not yet sent, typically in a pipe for
the Linux case.
If an analyser sets buf->to_forward to a given value, that many
data will be forwarded between the two stream interfaces attached
to a buffer without waking the task up. The same applies once all
analysers have been released. This saves a large amount of calls
to process_session() and a number of task_dequeue/queue.
Sometimes we don't care about a read timeout, for instance, from the
client when waiting for the server, but we still want the client to
be able to read.
Till now it was done by articially forcing the read timeout to ETERNITY.
But this will cause trouble when we want the low level stream sock to
communicate without waking the session up. So we add a BF_READ_NOEXP
flag to indicate that when the read timeout is to be set, it might
have to be set to ETERNITY.
Since BF_READ_ENA was not used, we replaced this flag.
We don't want to report a buffer timeout if there was I/O activity
for the same events. That way we'll not have to always re-arm timeouts
on I/O, without the fear of a timeout triggering too fast.
For keep-alive, line-mode protocols and splicing, we will need to
limit the sender to process a certain amount of bytes. The limit
is automatically set to the buffer size when analysers are detached
from the buffer.
Instead of calling a hard-coded function to produce data, let's
reference this function into the buffer and call it from there
when BF_HIJACK is set. This goes in the direction of more generic
session management code.
All the processing has now completely been split in layers. As of
now, everything is still in process_session() which is not the right
place, but the code sequence works. Timeouts, retries, errors, all
work.
The shutdown sequence has been strictly applied: BF_SHUTR/BF_SHUTW
are only assigned by lower layers. Upper layers can only indicate
their wish to close using BF_SHUTR_NOW and BF_SHUTW_NOW.
When a shutdown is performed on a stream interface, the buffer flags
are updated accordingly and re-checked by upper layers. A lot of care
has been taken to ensure that aborts during intermediate connection
setups are correctly handled and shutdowns correctly propagated to
both buffers.
A future evolution would consist in ensuring that BF_SHUT?_NOW may
be set at any time, and applies only when the buffer is empty. This
might help with error messages, but might complicate the processing
of data remaining in buffers.
Some useless buffer flag combinations have been removed.
Stat counters are still broken (eg: per-server total number of sessions).
Error messages should be delayed to the close instant and be produced by
protocol.
Many functions must now move to proper locations.
Two new functions are used instead : buffer_check_{shutr,shutw}.
It is indeed more adequate to check for new closures only when the
buffer reports them.
Several remaining unclosed connections were detected after a test,
even before this patch, so a bug remains. To reproduce, try the
following during 30 seconds :
inject30l4 -n 20000 -l -t 1000 -P 10 -o 4 -u 100 -s 100 -G 127.0.0.1:8000/
The connection setup code has been refactored in order to
make it run only on low level (stream interface). Several
complicated functions have been removed from backend.c,
and we now have sess_update_stream_int() to manage
an assigned connection, sess_prepare_conn_req() to assign a
server to a connection request, perform_http_redirect() to
redirect instead of connecting to server, and return_srv_error()
to return connection error status messages.
The stream_interface status changes are checked before adjusting
buffer flags, so that the buffers can be informed about this lower
level update.
A new connection is initiated by changing si->state from SI_ST_INI
to SI_ST_REQ.
The code seems to work but is awfully dirty. Some functions need
to be moved, and the layering is not yet quite clear.
A lot of dead old code has simply been removed.
The buffer flags became a big bazaar. Re-arrange them
so that their names are more explicit and so that they
are more easily readable in hex form. Some aggregates
have also been adjusted.
srv_state has been removed from HTTP state machines, and states
have been split in either TCP states or analyzers. For instance,
the TARPIT state has just become a simple analyzer.
New flags have been added to the struct buffer to compensate this.
The high-level stream processors sometimes need to force a disconnection
without touching a file-descriptor (eg: report an error). But if
they touched BF_SHUTW or BF_SHUTR, the file descriptor would not
be closed. Thus, the two SHUT?_NOW flags have been added so that
an application can request a forced close which the stream interface
will be forced to obey.
During this change, a new BF_HIJACK flag was added. It will
be used for data generation, eg during a stats dump. It
prevents the producer on a buffer from sending data into it.
BF_SHUTR_NOW /* the producer must shut down for reads ASAP */
BF_SHUTW_NOW /* the consumer must shut down for writes ASAP */
BF_HIJACK /* the producer is temporarily replaced */
BF_SHUTW_NOW has precedence over BF_HIJACK. BF_HIJACK has
precedence over BF_MAY_FORWARD (so that it does not need it).
New functions buffer_shutr_now(), buffer_shutw_now(), buffer_abort()
are provided to manipulate BF_SHUT* flags.
A new type "stream_interface" has been added to describe both
sides of a buffer. A stream interface has states and error
reporting. The session now has two stream interfaces (one per
side). Each buffer has stream_interface pointers to both
consumer and producer sides.
The server-side file descriptor has moved to its stream interface,
so that even the buffer has access to it.
process_srv() has been split into three parts :
- tcp_get_connection() obtains a connection to the server
- tcp_connection_failed() tests if a previously attempted
connection has succeeded or not.
- process_srv_data() only manages the data phase, and in
this sense should be roughly equivalent to process_cli.
Little code has been removed, and a lot of old code has been
left in comments for now.
It is not always convenient to run checks on req->l in functions to
check if a buffer is empty or full. Now the stream_sock functions
set flags BF_EMPTY and BF_FULL according to the buffer contents. Of
course, functions which touch the buffer contents adjust the flags
too.
BF_SHUTR_PENDING and BF_SHUTW_PENDING were poor ideas because
BF_SHUTR is the pending of BF_SHUTW_DONE and BF_SHUTW is the
pending of BF_SHUTR_DONE. Remove those two useless and confusing
"pending" versions and rename buffer_shut{r,w}_* functions.
This is the first attempt at moving all internal parts from
using struct timeval to integer ticks. Those provides simpler
and faster code due to simplified operations, and this change
also saved about 64 bytes per session.
A new header file has been added : include/common/ticks.h.
It is possible that some functions should finally not be inlined
because they're used quite a lot (eg: tick_first, tick_add_ifset
and tick_is_expired). More measurements are required in order to
decide whether this is interesting or not.
Some function and variable names are still subject to change for
a better overall logics.
A second occurrence of read-timeout rearming was present in stream_sock.c.
To fix the problem, it was necessary to put the shutdown information in
the buffer (already planned).
Two new functions http_header_add_tail() and http_header_add_tail2()
make it easier to append headers, and also reduce the number of
sprintf() calls and perform stricter checks.
The HTTP parser has been rewritten for better compliance to RFC2616.
The same parser is now usable for both requests and responses, and
it now supports HTTP/0.9 as well as multi-line headers. It has also
been improved for speed ; a typicial HTTP request is parsed in about
2 microseconds on a 1 GHz processor.
The monitor-uri check has been moved so that the requests are not
logged. The httpclose option now tries to change as little as
possible in the request, and does not affect the first header if
it is already set to 'close'. HTTP/0.9 requests are converted to
HTTP/1.0 before being forwarded.
Headers and request transformations are now distinct. The headers
list is updated after each insertion/removal/transformation. The
request is re-parsed and checked after each transformation. It is
not possible anymore to remove a request, and requests which lead
to invalid request lines are now rejected.
The stats page could not tell the difference between a FE and a BE.
It has been revamped to indicate all relevant information. The font
is also slightly smaller in order for all the info to fit into small
screens. The data output path has been greatly simplified to use
string chunks.
HTTP error messages were all specific cases handled by an IF.
Now they are all in an array so that it will be easier to add
new ones. Also, the return functions now use chunks as inputs
so that it should be easier to provide alternative return
messages if needed.
As suggested by Markus Elfring, a few "const char *" have replaced
some "char *" declarations where a function is not expected to
modify a value. It does not change the code but it helps detecting
coding errors.
The files are now stored under :
- include/haproxy for the generic includes
- include/types.h for the structures needed within prototypes
- include/proto.h for function prototypes and inline functions
- src/*.c for the C files
Most include files are now covered by LGPL. A last move still needs
to be done to put inline functions under GPL and not LGPL.
Version has been set to 1.3.0 in the code but some control still
needs to be done before releasing.
Willy Tarreau
Willy Tarreau