Network servers in Clive

The TR draft kept at TR describes, including some code excerpts how network services are built leveraging the tools described in the previous posts (and the TRs they mention).

In short, it is very easy to build services in a CSP like world while, at the same time, those services may be supplied across the network. And that considers also a set of pipes, or fifos, as a network!. It is not just TCP.

This is a teaser:

func (s *Srv) put(m *Msg, c <-chan []byte, rc chan<- []byte) {
wt, ok := s.t.(zx.RWTree)
if !ok {
close(rc, "not a rw tree")
return
}
err := wt.Put(m.Rid, m.D, c)
close(rc, err)
}

And this is another:

cc, err := Dial("fifo!*!ftest", nil)

if err != nil {

t.Fatal(err)

}

for i := 0; i < 10; i++ {

cc.Out <- []byte(fmt.Sprintf("<%d>", i))

msg := string(<-cc.In)

printf("got %s back\n", msg)

}

close(cc.In)

close(cc.Out)

Files and name spaces meet channels in Clive

This is the third post on a series of posts describing what we did as part of the ongoing effort to build a new OS, which we just named as "Clive". The previous two posts described how channels were used and bridged to the outside pipes and connections, and how they where multiplexed to make it easy to write protocols in a CSP style.

This post describes what we did regarding file trees and name spaces. This won't be a surprise considering that we come from the Plan 9, Inferno, Plan B, NIX, and Octopus heritage.

But first things last. Yes, last. A name space is separated from the conventional file tree abstraction. That is, name spaces exist on their own and map prefixes to directory entries.  A name space is searched using this interface

type Finder interface {
Find(path, pred string, depth0 int) <-chan zx.Dir
}

The only operation lets the caller find a stream of matching directory entries for the request.

Directory entries are within the subtree rooted at the given path, and must match the supplied predicate.

A predicate here is a very powerful thing, inspired by the unix command named before our operation.

For example,  the predicate

~ name "*.[ch]" & depth < 3

can be used to find files with names matching C source file names but no deeper than three

levels counting from the path given.

It is also important to notice that the results are delivered through a channel. This means that the operation may be issued, reach a name space at the other end of the network, and the caller may just retrieve the stream of replies when desired (or pass the stream to another process).

Things like removing all object files within a subtree can now be done in a couple of calls. One to find the stream of entries, and another to convert that stream into a stream of remove requests.

And here is where the first thing (deferred until now) comes. The interface for a file tree to be used across the network relies on channels (as promises) to retrieve the result of each operation requested. Furthermore, those channels are buffered in many cases (eg., on all error indications) and might be even ignored if the caller is going to checkout later the status of the entire request in some other way.

Thus, we can actually stream the series of removes in this example. Note that the call to remove simply issues the call and returns a channel that can be used to receive the reply later on.

oc := ns.Find("/a/b", "~ name *.[ch] & depth < 3", 0)

for d := range oc {

fs.Remove(d["path"]) // and ignore the error channel

}

This is just an example. A realistic case would not ignore the error channel returned by

the call to remove. It would probably defer the check until later, or pass the channel to another process checking out that removes were made. 

Nevertheless, the example gives a glance of the power of file system interfaces used in Clive.

Reading and Writing is also made relying on input and output channels.

If you are interested in more details, you can read zx, which describes the file system and name space interfaces, and perhaps also nchan, which describes CSP like tools used in Clive and important to understand how these interfaces are used in practice.

Channels, pipes, connections, and multiplexors

This post is the second in a series to describe how we adapted the CSP style of programming used in Go to the use of external pipes, files, network connections, and related artefacts.
This was the first post. In what follows we refer as "pipe" to any external file-descriptor-like artefact used to reach the external world (for input or output).

Connections
The nchan package defines a connection as

 type Conn struct {
  Tag string // debug
  In  <-chan []byte
  Out chan<- []byte
 }

This joins two channels to make a full-duplex connection. A process talking to an external entity relies on this structure to bridge the system pipe used to a pair of channels. There are utilies that leverage the func- tions described in the previous section and build a channel interface to external pipes, for example:

 func NewConn(rw io.ReadWriteCloser, nbuf int, win, wout chan bool) Conn

The function creates processes to feed and drain the connection channels from and to the external pipe. Fur- thermore, if rw supports closing only for reading or writing, a close on the input or output channels would close the respective halves of the pipe. Because of the message protocol explained in the previous section, errors are also propagated across the external pipe and the process using the connection can very much ignore that the source/sink of data is external.
It is easy to build pipes where the Out channel sends elements through the In channel:

        func NewPipe(nbuf int) Conn

And, using this, we can create in-memory connections that do not leave the process space:

 func NewConnPipe(nbuf int) (Conn, Conn)

This has been very useful during testing, because this connection can be created with no buffering and it is easier to spot dead-locks that involve both ends of the connection. Once the program is ready, we can replace the connection based pipe with an actual system provided pipe.

Multiplexors
Upon the channel based connections shown in the previous sections, the nchan package provides multiplex- ors.

 type Mux struct {
  In chan Conn
  ...
 }
 func NewMux(c Conn, iscaller bool) *Mux
 func (m *Mux) Close(err error)
 func (m *Mux) Out() chan<- []byte
 func (m *Mux) Rpc() (outc chan<- []byte, repc <-chan []byte)

A program speaking a protocol usually creates a new Conn connection by dialing or accepting connections and then creates a Mux by calling NewMux to multiplex the connection among multiple requests.

The nice thing of the multiplexed connection is that requests may carry a series of messages (and not just one message per request) and may or not have replies. Replies may also be a full series of messages. Both ends of a multiplexed connetion (the process using the mux and its peer at the other end of the pipe) may issue requests. Thus, this is not a client-server interaction model, although it may be used as such.
To issue new outgoing requests through the multiplexor, the process calls Out (to issue requests with no expected reply):

 oc := mux.Out()
 oc <- []byte("no reply")
 oc <- []byte("expected")
 close(oc)

Or the process may call Rpc (to issue requests with an expected reply).

 rc, rr := mux.Rpc()
 rc <- []byte("another")
 rc <- []byte("request")
 close(rc)
 for m := range rr {
  Printf("got %v as part of the reply\en", m)
 }
 Printf("and the final error status is %v\en", cerror(rr))

In the first case, the multiplexor returns a Conn to the caller with just the Out channel. Of course, this can be done multiple times to issue several concurrent outgoing requests:

In the figure, the two connections of the left were built by two calls to mux.Out(), which returns a Conn with an Out chan to issue requests. The process using the Out channel may issue as many messages as desired and then close the channel.

If the request depicted below requires a reply, mux.Rpc() is be called finstead of mux.Out() and the resulting picture is as shown.

The important part is that messages (and replies) sent as part of a request (or reply) may be streamed with- out affecting other requests and replies, other than by the usage of the underlying connection. That is, an idle stream does not block other streams.
The interface for the receiving part of the multiplexor is a single In channel that conveys one Conn per incoming request. The request has only the In channel if no reply is expected, and has both the In and Out channels set if a reply is expected.

To receive requests from the other end of the pipe, the code might look like this:

for call := range mux.In {
// call is a Conn
for m := range call.In {
Printf("got %v as part of the request\en", m)
}
if call.Out != nil {
call.Out <- []byte("a reply")
call.Out <- []byte("was expected, but...")
close(call.Out, "Oops!, failed")
}
}

For example, if a process received two requests, one with no reply expected and another with a reply expected, the picture would be:

Here, the two connections on the left represent requests that were received through the In channel depicted on top of the multiplexor.

The important thing to note is that processes may now issue streams of requests, or replies, through channels and they are fed to external pipes (or from them) as required. The interfaces shown have greatly simplified programming for (networked) system serviced being written for the new system.

Channels and pipes: close and errors

This post describes changes made to Go channels and tools built upon those to provide system and network-wide services for a new OS under construction. Further posts will follow and describe other related set of tools, but the post is already long enough. Yes, belts are gone, we use our modified channels directly now.

A channel is an artifact that can be used to send (typed) data through it. The Go language operations on channels include sending, receiving, and selection among a set of send and receive operations. Go permits also to close a channel after the last item has been sent.
On most systems, processes and applications talk through pipes, network connections, FIFOS, and related artifacts. In short, they are just file descriptors once open, permit the application to write data (for sending) and/or read data (for receiving). Some of these are duplex, but they can be considered to be a pair of devices (one for each direction). In what follows we will refer to all these artifacts as pipes (e.g., a net- work connection may be considered as a pair of simplex pipes).
There is a mismatch between channels and pipes and this paper shows what we did to try to bridge the gap between both abstractions for a new system. The aim is to let applications leverage the CSP style of programming while, at the same time, let them work across the network.
We assume that the reader is familiar with channels in the Go language, and describes only our modi- fications and additions.

Close and errors

When using pipes, each end of the pipe may close and the pipe implementation takes care of propagating the error to the other end. That is not the case with standard Go channels. Furthermore, upon errors, it is desirable for one end of the pipe to learn about the error that did happen at the other end.
We have modified the standard Go implementation to:

1. 1  Accept an optional error argument to close.
   
2. 2  Make the send operation return false when used on a closed channel (instead of panicing; the receive operation already behaves nicely the case of a closed channel).
   
3. 3  Provide a primitive, cerror, that returns the error given when the channel was closed.
   
4. 4  Make a close of an already closed channel a no-operation (instead of a panic).
   

With this modified tool in hand, it is feasible to write the following code:

var inc, outc chan[]byte
...
for data := range inc {
ndata := modify(data)
if ok := outc <-ndata; !ok {
close(inc, cerror(outc))
break
}
}
close(outc, cerror(inc))

Here, a process consumes data from inc and produces new data through outc for another one. The image to have in mind is

where the code shown corresponds to the middle process. Perhaps the first process terminates normally (or abnormally), in which case it would close inc. In this case, our code closes outc as expected. But this time, the error given by the first process is known to the second process, and it can even forward such error to the third one.
A more interesting case is when the third process decides to cease consuming data from outc and calls close. Now, our middle process will notice that ok becomes false when it tries to send more data, and can break its loop cleanly, closing also the input channel to singal to the first process that there is no point in producing further data. In this second example, the last call to close is a no-operation because the output channel was already closed, and we don’t need to add unnecessary code to prevent the call.
The important point is that termination of the data stream is easy to handle for the program without resorting to exceptions (or panics), and we know which one is the error, so we can take whatever measures are convenient in that case.

Channels and pipes
There are three big differences between channels and pipes (we are using pipe to refer to any ‘‘file descrip- tor’’ used to convey data, as stated before). One is that pipes may have errors when sending or receiving, but channels do not. Another one is that pipes carry ony streams of bytes and not separate messages. Yet another is that channels convey a data type but pipes convey just bytes.
The first difference is mostly dealt with the changes made to channels as described in the previous section. That is, channels may have errors while sending and or receiving, considered the changes made. Therefore, the code using a channel must consider errors in very much the same way it would do if using a pipe.
To address the third difference we are going to consider channels of byte arrays by now.
The second difference can be dealt with by ensuring that applications using channels to speak through a pipe preserve message boundaries within the pipe. With this in mind, a new nchan package pro- vides new channel tools to bridge the gap between the channel and the pipe domains.
The following function writes each message received from c into w as it arrives. If w preserves mes- sage boundaries, that is enough. The second function is its counterpart.

func WriteBytesTo(w io.Writer, c <-chan []byte) (int64, error)
func ReadBytesFrom(r io.Reader, c chan<- []byte) (int64, error)

 However, is most cases, the transport does not preserve message boundaries. Thus, the next function writes all messages received from c into w, but precedes each such write with a header indicating the message length. The second function can rely on this to read one message at a time and forward it to the given chan- nel.

  func WriteMsgsTo(w io.Writer, c <-chan []byte) (int64, error)
func ReadMsgsFrom(r io.Reader, c chan<- []byte) (int64, error)

One interesting feature of WriteMsgsTo and ReadMsgsFrom is that when the channel is closed, its error sta- tus is checked out and forwarded through the pipe. The other end notices that the message is an error indi- cation and closes the channel with said error.
Thus, code like the excerpt shown for our middle process in the stream of processes would work correctly even if the input channel comes from a pipe and not from a another process within the same program.

The the post in the series will be about channel connections and channel multiplexors.