My prefered way to use an io_service is to create a thread on application start that executes the io_service's run method. The problem is, if there is no task for io_service, its run method returns immediately and the thread terminates.
As you can see from the chat_client.cpp
...
boost::asio::io_service io_service;
...
chat_client c(io_service, iterator);
boost::thread t(boost::bind(&boost::asio::io_service::run, &io_service));
the thread is started after some async task is added to io_service. This is done in the chat_clients's constructor.
My question is: Is there a way to create the thread before some task is added to io_service, i. e.
// create io_service and thread on application start
boost::asio::io_service io_service;
boost::thread t(boost::bind(&boost::asio::io_service::run, &io_service));
// add some task to io_service
chat_client c(io_service, iterator);
As you said, its run method returns immediately because it has no work.
You need to use boost::asio::io_service::work . Think of it as a dummy work item, so io_service::run never runs out of work, and thus doesn't return immediately.
Example:
auto work = boost::make_shared<boost::asio::io_service::work>(m_ioservice);
m_ioservice.run();
Some people prefer an io_service::run to always block, waiting for work. Other people prefer the behavior Asio gives you by default.
Related
I often have to execute code on a separate thread that is long running, blocking, instable and\or has a potential to hang forever. Since the existence of TPL the internet is full of examples that nicely cancel a task with the cancellation token but I never found an example that kills a task that hangs. Code that hangs forever is likely to be expected as soon as you communicate with hardware or call some third party code. A task that hangs cannot check the cancellation token and is doomed to stay alive forever. In critical applications I equip those tasks with alive signals that are sent on regular time intervals. As soon as a hanging task is detected, it is killed and a new instance is started.
The code below shows an example task that calls a long running placeholder method SomeThirdPartyLongOperation() which has the potential to hang forever. The StopTask() first checks if the task is still running an tries to cancel it with the cancellation token. If that doesn’t work, the task hangs and the underlying thread is interrupted\aborted old school style.
private Task _task;
private Thread _thread;
private CancellationTokenSource _cancellationTokenSource;
public void StartTask()
{
_cancellationTokenSource = new CancellationTokenSource();
_task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => DoWork(_cancellationTokenSource.Token), _cancellationTokenSource.Token, TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning, TaskScheduler.Default);
}
public void StopTask()
{
if (_task.Status == TaskStatus.RanToCompletion)
return;
_cancellationTokenSource.Cancel();
try
{
_task.Wait(2000); // Wait for task to end and prevent hanging by timeout.
}
catch (AggregateException aggEx)
{
List<Exception> exceptions = aggEx.InnerExceptions.Where(e => !(e is TaskCanceledException)).ToList(); // Ignore TaskCanceledException
foreach (Exception ex in exceptions)
{
// Process exception thrown by task
}
}
if (!_task.IsCompleted) // Task hangs and didn't respond to cancellation token => old school thread abort
{
_thread.Interrupt();
if (!_thread.Join(2000))
{
_thread.Abort();
}
}
_cancellationTokenSource.Dispose();
if (_task.IsCompleted)
{
_task.Dispose();
}
}
private void DoWork(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(Thread.CurrentThread.Name)) // Set thread name for debugging
Thread.CurrentThread.Name = "DemoThread";
_thread = Thread.CurrentThread; // Save for interrupting/aborting if thread hangs
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
SomeThirdPartyLongOperation(i);
}
}
Although I’ve been using this construct for some years now, I want to know if there are some potential mistakes in it. I’ve never seen an example of a task that saves the underlying thread or gives it a name to simplify debugging, so I’m a bit unsure if this is the right way to go. Comment on any detail is welcome!
Code that hangs forever is likely to be expected as soon as you communicate with hardware or call some third party code.
Communication: absolutely not. There's always a way to timeout with communication APIs, so even with misbehaving hardware, there's no need to force-kill an I/O operation.
Third-party code: only if you're paranoid (or have high demands such as 24x7 automation).
Here's the bottom line:
There's no way to force-kill a task.
You can force-kill a thread, but this can easily cause serious problems with application state, possibility if introducing deadlocks in other parts of the code, and resource leaks.
You can force-kill an appdomain, which solves a large portion of app state / deadlock issues with killing threads. However, it doesn't solve them all, and there's still the problem of resource leaks.
You can force-kill a process. This is the only truly clean and reliable solution.
So, if you choose to trust the third-party code, I recommend that you just call it like any other API. If you require 100% reliability regardless of third-party libraries, you'll need to wrap the third-party dll into a separate process and use cross-process communication to call it.
Your current code force-kills a thread pool thread, which is certainly not recommended; those threads belong to the thread pool, not to you, and this is still true even if you specify LongRunning. If you go the kill-thread route (which is not fully reliable), then I recommend using an explicit thread.
The question is why is this task even hanging at all? I think there's no universal solution to this problem but you should focus on the task to be always responsible and not on forcing to interrupt it.
In this code, it looks like you're looking for a simple thread rather than a task - you shouldn't link tasks to threads - it's very likely that the task will switch to another thread after some async operations and you will end up on killing an innoccent thread that is not connected to your task anymore. If you really need to kill the whole thread then make a dedicated one just for this job.
You shouldn't also name or do anything with any thread that is used for tasks' default pool. Consider this code:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Task.Run(sth);
Console.Read();
}
static async Task sth()
{
Thread.CurrentThread.Name = "My name";
Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
await Task.Delay(1);
Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.Name ?? "No name");
}
the output is:
3
4
No name
The boost docs say that cancelled async connect, send and receive finish immediately, and the handlers for cancelled operations will be passed the boost::asio::error::operation_aborted error.
I would like to find out if the cancelled handler gets to run (and see the operation_aborted error) before other (non-cancelled, and newly scheduled) completion handlers run.
Here is the timeline that concerns me:
acceptHandler and readHandler are running on the same event loop and the same thread.
time t0 - readHandler is running on oldConnectionSocket
time t1 - acceptHandler runs
time t2 - acceptHandler calls oldConnectionSocket.cancel
time t3 - acceptHandler closes oldConnectionSocket
time t4 - acceptHandler calls newConnectionSocket.async_read(...readHandler...)
time t5 - readHandler is called (from which context?)
Is it possible at t5 for readHandler to be called in the newConnectionSocket context before it is called with the operation_aborted error in the oldConnectionSocket context?
Cancelled operations will immediately post their handlers for deferred invocation. However, the io_service makes no guarantees on the invocation order of handlers. Thus, the io_service could choose to invoke the ReadHandlers in either order. Currently, only a strand specifies guaranteed ordering under certain conditions.
Within a completion handler, if the goal is to know which I/O object was associated with the operation, then consider constructing the completion handler so that it has an explicit handle to the I/O object. This is often accomplished using any of the following:
a custom functor
std::bind() or boost::bind()
a C++11 lambda
One common idiom is to have the I/O object be managed by a single class that inherits from boost::enable_shared_from_this<>. When a class inherits from boost::enable_shared_from_this, it provides a shared_from_this() member function that returns a valid shared_ptr instance to this. A copy of the shared_ptr is passed to completion handlers, such as a capture-list in lambdas or passed as the instance handle to boost::bind(). This allows for the handlers to know the I/O object on which the operation was performed, and causes the lifetime of the I/O object to be extended to at least as long as the handler. See the Boost.Asio asynchronous TCP daytime server tutorial for an example using this approach.
class tcp_connection
: public boost::enable_shared_from_this<tcp_connection>
{
public:
// ...
void start()
{
boost::asio::async_write(socket_, ...,
boost::bind(&tcp_connection::handle_write, shared_from_this(),
boost::asio::placeholders::error,
boost::asio::placeholders::bytes_transferred));
}
void handle_write(
const boost::system::error_code& error,
std::size_t bytes_transferred)
{
// I/O object is this->socket_.
}
tcp::socket socket_;
};
On the other hand, if the goal is to determine if one handler has executed before the other, then:
the application will need to explicitly manage the state
trying to manage multiple dependent call chains may be introducing unnecessary complexity and often indicates a need to reexamine the design
custom handlers could be used to prioritize the order in which handlers are executed. The Boost.Asio Invocation example uses custom handlers that are added to a priority queue, which are then executed at a later point in time.
I need to trasmit with a (Boost) tcp server information collected in real time by the ARToolKit video tracking library.
Which is the right way of doing it?
I'm actually doing it with Boost threads and asio, but I think that what I do is done in a bad way (even if it works)
Here is what I do to run the server (the source of the Server class is from Boost tutorial):
boost::asio::io_service io_service;
Server s(io_service, 2345);
boost::thread bt(boost::bind(&boost::asio::io_service::run, &io_service)); //server in background in a second thread
Then I start the video tracking
startTracking(); //blocking call in the main thread
defined in this way
void startTracking(){
glutInit(&argc, argv); //global and reachable
if ((gArglSettings = arglSetupForCurrentContext()) == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "main(): arglSetupForCurrentContext() returned error.\n");
exit(-1);}
... //init a lot of artoolkit parameters
arVideoCapStart();
argMainLoop( NULL, keyEvent, mainLoop );
}
In this (horrible) way everything works. But I would like to avoid spawning a second thread for the asio server (it is not supposed to be thrown there, as I read from the Boost doc).
Otherwise trying to put the video traking out of the main thread crashes the ARToolKit library ie:
boost::thread workerThread(startTracking);
workerThread.join();
When the join() is run the program segfaults at glutInit call
What do you think the workerThread.join() method does? Take a look at the answer to this question. So, calling the join method will cause the thread it is called from (main thread) to block and wait until the worker thread has completed. Is that what you want? If you have set up ASIO to run on that main thread, then none of the ASIO I/O socket handlers will be able to execute and thus it will appear to hang because the thread it is on is frozen from the join method. Likewise for the ARToolKit library, if the calls to it have been initiated on this main thread, then it too will appear to freeze because that thread is frozen when the join method is called.
If this is not your problem, then please provide more code.
According to MSDN:
The WaitForSingleObject function can wait for the following objects:
Change notification
Console input
Event
Memory resource notification
Mutex
Process
Semaphore
Thread
Waitable timer
Then we can use WaitForSingleObject to make the parent-thread wait for child ones.
int main()
{
HANDLE h_child_thread = CreateThread(0,0, child, 0,0,0); //create a thread in VC
WaitForSingleObject(h_child_thread, INFINITE); //So, parent-thread will wait
return 0;
}
Question
Is there any other way to make parent-thread wait for child ones in VC or Windows?
I don't quite understand the usage of WaitForSingleObject here, does it mean that the thread's handle will be available when the thread terminates?
You can establish communication between threads in multiple ways and the terminating thread may somehow signal its waiting thread. It could be as simple as writing some special value to a shared memory location that the waiting thread can check. But this won't guarantee that the terminating thread has terminated when the waiting thread sees the special value (ordering/race conditions) or that the terminating thread terminates shortly after that (it can just hang or block on something) and it won't guarantee that the special value gets ever set before the terminating thread actually terminates (the thread can crash). WaitForSingleObject (and its companion WaitForMultipleObjects) is a sure way to know of a thread termination when it occurs. Just use it.
The handle will still be available in the sense that its value won't be gone. But it is practically useless after the thread has terminated, except you need this handle to get the thread exit code. And you still need to close the handle in the end. That is unless you're OK with handle/memory leaks.
for the first queation - yes. The method commonly used here is "Join". the usage is language dependant.
In .NET C++ you can use the Thread's Join method. this is from the msdn:
Thread* newThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(0, Test::Work));
newThread->Start();
if(newThread->Join(waitTime + waitTime))
{
Console::WriteLine(S"New thread terminated.");
}
else
{
Console::WriteLine(S"Join timed out.");
}
Secondly, the thread is terminated when when you are signaled with "WaitForSingleObject" but the handle is still valid (for a terminated thread). So you still need to explicitly close the handle with CloseHandle.
In asio:: io_service I insert objects. asio:: io_service::run() runs in several threads.
The possibility to expect the completion of any object in queue is necessary.
For example:
template <typename T>
struct handler {
void operator()() {
....
}
T get() const {...}
};
asio::io_service ios;
ios.post(handler());
How I can refer to the object in queue?
How can I pause the main program loop, untill handler::operator() is executed?
Thanks.
Here's what I know so far:
1. Several handlers are executing on several threads.
2. Handlers run independently of each other. There is no synchronization needed between threads for data/race conditions.
3. Get can be called on anyone handler. When called the handler should stop calculating and let another thread call handler::get().
This really seems more like a multi-threading / concurrency question then a boost::asio question. At the moment I do not see a need to use an io_service. It seems like several threads could just be started without an io_service and some synchronization could be used between the threads.
The thread calling Handler::get() needs to wait until the io_service thread running operator() completes its calculation before it can return.
Consider using a condition variable. The handler::get() method can wait until the condition is met (i.e. operator() finishes its calculation). The io_service thread that runs operator() would notify the main thread through the condition variable.
An example of one thread notifying another thread via a condition variable is here.