DCPM: body bags

[Neil Williams]

On Friday 31 Oct 2003 10:54 am, Steve Marvell wrote:
> On the subject of "what do I do with a die from a module way way down
> the chain of command?":
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
>
> local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {
>   die "You killed Kenny! @_";
> };
>
> die "you bastard";
>
> Be careful not to exit() in these handlers, since that really break
> thing when someone evals it and expects to catch the dies.

OK, I've done quite a few more upgrades since the meeting - including adding a 
rollover and a lot more servers > 500 now.

The script already tries 6 queries sequentially per run. It also now repeats 
to a new server if there's no DNS etc. because die() isn't dying.

Net result (sorry), is that I got a cron report tonight that instead of giving 
the usual 4 to 6 message reports, gave 45! 15kb!

So by handling die(), I'm allowing the script to continue again and again. It 
stops when it has finally contacted and queried successfully for each query - 
unless it segfaults.

I'm trying to handle / prevent as many of these as I can but I don't actually 
get notified of a segfault - the cron report ends, the result is emailed and 
the segfault is only reported to the remote server logs. (I never see it on 
the remote reports, even though it does appear on similar local console 
printouts.)

Should I use exit() anyway - in the top level code? There are times when the 
die() that has been handled is leaving the underlying module code in a bad 
state. e.g. after an ECONNREFUSED, I quite often get a broken pipe error - 
yet the server connection reporting the broken pipe is always fine when 
tested separately. I also get cleanup errors from undefined connections 
created using new() that cannot then be destroyed.


-- 

Neil Williams
=============
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