Re: How to make perl script work simltaneously on multiple objects

[McA]

Hi,

I would go with the fork option. You seem to have a process running which detects new server instances. This would be your main loop (pseudocode):

my %found;
my %active;

# sighandler for sigchild
$SIG{'SIGCHLD'} = sub {
    my $pid = waitpid;
    delete $active{$pid};
};

while(running) {
    if(my $serverid = new_server_found()) {
        $found{$serverid} = {
            'name' => $servername,
            'otherinfo' => $otherinfo,
        };
        my $pid = fork;
        if(defined $pid) {
            # fork ok
            if($pid == 0) {
                 # this is in the child
                 do_all_stuff_necessary_for_hardening();
                 exit $rc;
            }
            else {
                # this is parent
                # You have the pid and you know that this
                # fork was concerning a server you found
                # probably you want to store this information
                $active{$pid} = $serverid;
            }
            
        else {
            # no fork => error handling
            die ("FATAL: Something went wrong");
        }

    }
    sleep(1);
}

BE AWARE: This is perlish pseudocode and should give only hints.

McA

[slayedbylucifer]

Thanks McA. Sorry for late reply. I will evaluate fork usage and will see how it goes. I not sure how much code change would it take.

[McA]

Hi,

if you fork a perl script which does have all to process the job it should be quite easy as you don't need to exec and you do have everything in hands. Anything you set up before fork is also accessible in the child. Be careful. Memory usage is multiplied.

There a some points you have to be aware of:

• Childs inherit open io handles. If you don't need them close them in childs.
• If you have a DBI handle the childs inherit it. The DESTROY handler of DBI is shutting down the connection when childs exit. So look at manpage of DBI concerning DBI and forking.
• Make a SIGCHLD handler for reaping of just for setting flags to reap in parent. waitpid is your friend. Sometimes it's nice to call the non-blocking version of waitpid.
• Be aware that the SIGCHLD handler interrupts a sleep(), so that this sleep may be much less than the amount of seconds specified.

McA

[slayedbylucifer]

Hi McA,

I had a developer colleague of mine help me on writing below fork code (after following your advice).

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use POSIX;

my @list=("server1","server2","server3","server4","server5","server6",
+"server7","server8");
my $count = 0;
my $pcount = 5;

foreach (@list)
{
    chomp ;
    my $real_host = $_;
    if( (my $pid = fork()) == 0)
    {
        print "Processing - $_ \n";
        my $wait=ceil(rand(10));
        print "Wait:$wait \n";
        sleep($wait);
        print "Exit Status= $? \n";
        if($? ==0)
        {
            print "$_ Exit successfully \n";
        }
        else
        {
            print "$_ Does not Exit successfully \n";
        }
        print "Completing - $_ \n";
        exit;
    }
    $count++;
    while($count >= $pcount)
    {
        wait();
        $count--;
    }
}

while(wait() != -1){}

I still don’t understand few parts of this code but I am OK with that. This test code is working perfectly. So I am planning to use the same logic in my orchestrator.

Many thanks for your help.