[Python-Dev] thread safe SMTP module (original) (raw)

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Wed Mar 14 19:26:20 CET 2007

On Wed, Mar 14, 2007, Jon Ribbens wrote:

Gordon Messmer <yinyang at eburg.com> wrote:

After some discussion, Aahz suggested that I discuss the problem here, on python-dev. He seemed to think that the problem I saw may have been an indication of a bug in python. Could anyone take a look at that thread and say whether it looks like a bug, or working with non-blocking sockets was the right thing to do? Well, not having to faff around with non-blocking IO is one of the major advantages of threading, so if blocking IO is indeed the cause of your problem then it certainly sounds like a bug in Python, or possibly your operating system.

One small wrinkle (and the reason I suggested bringing this to python-dev): I suspect that the problem is not a bug, but simply the occasional failure of sockets. When that happens in a threaded app without timeouts, eventually threads "die" (block forever). But you apparently can't use timeouts with file-wrapped sockets, so if that's the problem, we need to pick one of:

(And please note that if my analysis is correct, we need to make the fix for non-threaded apps, it's just more unusual to encounter the problem there.)

This level of design decision is beyond my capabilities.

Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"I disrespectfully agree." --SJM

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