Re: negative timeout can be set up by setsockopt system call

From: Nish Aravamudan
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 14:44:04 EST


On 11/7/05, Ram Gupta <ram.gupta5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 11/7/05, Ram Gupta <ram.gupta5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On 11/4/05, Nish Aravamudan <nish.aravamudan@xxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > > In Ram's specific case, I think, the call path is sys_setsockopt() ->
> > > sock_setsockopt() -> sock_set_timeout, which has a definition of:
> > >
> > > static int sock_set_timeout(long *timeo_p, char __user *optval, int
> > optlen)
> >
> > >> Exactly right.
>
> Ok.
>
> > > Ram, what is the expected behavior of negative values in the timeval?
> > > And what are you seeing happen right now?
> > >
> > > As of 2.6.14, looks like we convert any non-zero values into jiffies
> > > and store them in sk->sk_{rcv,snd}timeo...
> > >
> > I don't see any problem from the kernel side but the application
> > times out immediately causing certain failures as the schedule_timeout
> > returns immediately in case of negative values. Shouldn't there be a
> > check for negative values and return error to the application so that
> > it can handle it.
>
> I mean more along the lines of what does a man-page say the kernel
> should be doing if you request a negative timeout? More explicitly,
> what made you think negative timeouts should have a specific effect?
>
> > The man page is silent about the timeout behaviour in case of its
> > being negative. I believe that negative timeout is a mistake on behalf
> > of an application and hence should be treated as such (i.e should be
> > notified accordingly)

Well, the problem is that there is no defined behavior for specifying
a negative timeout (unlike poll(), for instance). So I'm not sure what
the best approach is (beyond complaining to the application developers
that their app is busted).

> When you say schedule_timeout() returns immediately, I assume your
> logs are filling up with "schedule_timeout: wrong timeout ..." ? (You
> may need to bump your loglevel). If not, then schedule_timeout() isn't
> getting a negative value.
>
> >> Yes I am getting the "schedule_timeout: wrong timeout ..."
> messages so I am sure the timeout has negative value.

Ok, maybe bring this up with the networking folks, as they may have a
better idea of what to do.

Thanks,
Nish
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