handleToFd closes Fd when Handle is GC'd

[danderson]

The following reproduction case creates a TCP server that will read forever from the first client that connects to it. Having a client do so (eg. with cat /dev/urandom | nc localhost 4242) will fairly rapidly cause the server to crash with a "Bad file descriptor" exception.

module Main where

import Control.Monad(forever)
import Network
import System.IO
import System.Posix.IO(fdToHandle, handleToFd)

main = withSocketsDo $ do
    (hdl, _, _) <- listenOn (PortNumber 4242) >>= accept
    newHdl <- handleToFd hdl >>= fdToHandle
    forever $ hGetChar newHdl >>= putChar >> hFlush stdout

My hunch on the cause is that handleToFd doesn't let go of the underlying system file descriptor when it returns the Fd. Later, when the GC runs, it collects hdl and incorrectly closes the system fd, now in use by newHdl.

An strace of the server binary confirms this sequence of events (shortened to the essentials, but the sequencing is as shown - 4 is the hdl/newHdl file descriptor):

...
select(5, [4], [], NULL, {134, 217727}) = 1 (in [4], left {134, 203169})
...
close(4)                                = 0
...
select(5, [4], [], NULL, {0, 0})        = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor)
write(2, "Minimal: ", 9Minimal: )                = 9
write(2, "<file descriptor: 4>: hGetChar: "..., 70<file descriptor: 4>: hGetChar: invalid argument (Bad file descriptor)) = 70

Running the binary with '+RTS -s' also shows that some GC passes did occur during the short lifetime of the program, further pointing the finger at incorrect collection of the system fd.

While the reproduction recipe seems silly, the handleToFd >>= fdToHandle scenario is actually very useful when doing low level FFI. The real code where I hit this bug is  http://bitbucket.org/danderson/tunskell/src/330b5edba1dc/Ioctl.hsc . I extract the Fd in order to make an ioctl() call, then return a new Handle of that Fd after the ioctl() finishes. Using this pattern, the code reading from that tweaked Handle dies after the first GC pass.

[simonmar]

Fixed:

Fri Mar 19 21:08:02 GMT 2010  Simon Marlow <marlowsd@gmail.com>
  * handleToFd: close both sides of a DuplexHandle (#3914)

    M ./System/Posix/IO.hsc -1 +10

Mon Mar 22 13:16:15 GMT 2010  Simon Marlow <marlowsd@gmail.com>
  * fix warnings

    M ./System/Posix/IO.hsc -1 +2

[igloo]

Merged.