Subject: [ libssh2-Bugs-2141548 ] libssh2_poll detects data on channel, but no data available

[ libssh2-Bugs-2141548 ] libssh2_poll detects data on channel, but no data available

From: SourceForge.net <noreply_at_sourceforge.net>
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:18:02 +0000

Bugs item #2141548, was opened at 2008-10-02 04:11
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by bagder
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Category: None
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
>Priority: 3
Private: No
Submitted By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
>Assigned to: Daniel Stenberg (bagder)
Summary: libssh2_poll detects data on channel, but no data available

Initial Comment:
I've got a small home-brewed SSH client and I've encountered a problem in the library with libssh2_poll() when checking for data on a channel.

Simply put, here's the setup. I have a thread that polls for data on a channel every few usec. When the libssh2_poll function detects data available to be read on the channel I'm interested in, I immediately try to read from that channel. Trouble is, if its a small piece of data that I'm expecting, the read fails while subsequent polls still think that there is data there.

So In my SSH client with a pty, I do something like hit the "z" key. This should send a single character over the lines to the remote SSH server plus any SSH/TCP/IP.... overhead. Now the remote SSH server will echo back the key plus any additional terminal formatting.

As soon as I hit my "z" key, libssh2_poll alerts me that data is available to be read from the channel, but attempting to read from the channel doesn't read any data...polling keeps saying theres data, I read nothing... repeat a lot of times...

If I keep hitting keystrokes, eventually the channel read picks up the data. So it seems like libssh2 holds onto small packets for some reason.

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>Comment By: Daniel Stenberg (bagder)
Date: 2009-04-05 20:18

Message:
libssh2_poll() seems to be fundamentally flawed.

I suggest we just call it deprecated and tell people to use poll()
instead!

Can you (or anyone else) provide a use case where the normal poll() or
select() isn't good enough or better?

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Comment By: Paul Thomas (thomaspu)
Date: 2008-10-02 04:22

Message:
I think the problem stems around line 1525 of channel.c. Looks like if we
call the channel_read function, we expect to read data from a call to
libssh2_packet_read() and if we don't read anything from that function
call, we don;t read anything period. However, the code doesn't check the
packet list to see if there's packets in it waiting to be read.

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Comment By: Paul Thomas (thomaspu)
Date: 2008-10-02 04:12

Message:
This one was written up by me, I just forgot to log in again!

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You can respond by visiting:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=703942&aid=2141548&group_id=125852

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Received on 2009-04-05