[ic] Threaded perl (re: debian bug #203579)

Stefan Hornburg racke at linuxia.de
Sat Feb 26 07:56:10 EST 2005


On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:20:40 +0000
Jamie Neil <jamie at versado.net> wrote:

> Karl Schmidt wrote:
> > I just ran the test listed in this deb bug report code using perl 5.8.4 
> > and got a seg fault. I'm confused - I read in a few places that this was 
> > no longer a problem? I wanted to run Interchange with stock debian perl 
> > code if I can, but I'm not sure if this is still an issue?
> > 
> > This bug is getting close to 2 years old -seems like perl should default 
> > to non threaded or this bug should get fixed?
> > 
> > I ran the test code listed in the debian bug and got a seg fault with 
> > the testing version of perl.
> > 
> > But this:
> > http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2003/01/16/whatsnew.html
> > 
> > --seems to imply that it is fixed????? (see under the "Perl Threads" 
> > section.)
> > 
> > Has anyone in perl upstream ever looked at this?:
> > 
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=203579
> > 
> > Isn't this the same bug that causes(d) problems in interchange?
> > 
> > How can I test for the perl thread bug in interchange?
> > 
> > Can someone provide an authoritative update of the status of the 
> > threaded issue?
> 
> My understanding of the problem with IC and threaded Perl is that it is 
> to do with certain Perl modules (particularly DBD) having thread 
> problems rather than Perl itself.
> 
> <rant>
> 
> DBD::MySQL claims that it is thread safe, provided it is linked to a 
> thread safe sql client library, but looking at the module provided with 
> Debian (sarge), it appears to be linked against the standard client 
> which is not thread safe. Now I don't know whether this is related to 
> the problem or not, because it's frankly beyond my expertise, but I 
> really wish that someone who _does_ have the expertise would take 
> ownership of this issue and at least identify what needs to be done to 
> actually fix it.
> 
> The general attitude at the moment seems to be "it's a Perl problem - 
> nothing to do with IC" and the solution is always "install a non 
> threaded Perl". To which I would answer "It may not be IC's fault, but 
> it _is_ an IC problem, because most Perl distributions are now threaded" 
> and "What's the point in having packaged versions of IC if all the 
> dependancies have to be installed from source?".
> 
> </rant>

You are right, it is a problem for Interchange. But there is not much
we can do about it _and_ performance tests from Mike Heins shown that
Interchange running with threaded Perl suffers a significant slowdown.

Bye
	Racke


-- 
LinuXia Systems => http://www.linuxia.de/
Expert Interchange Consulting and System Administration
ICDEVGROUP => http://www.icdevgroup.org/
Interchange Development Team



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