Re: Socket-level timeouts?

[Philip Guenther <guenther+ldapdev@sendmail.com>]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Chris Adams wrote:
> On Apr 8, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Aaron Richton wrote:
> > I think you might be confusing LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT and 
> > LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT. (Or maybe I am...) But as I recall, NETWORK_TIMEOUT is 
> > for initial connect(), and you're referring to ongoing conversations.

Aaron is correct that LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT only affects connect() in 
the released versions.

In versions before 2.4.4, LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT had no effect.  Starting in 
version 2.4.4 it sets the default timeout for reading the requested 
result in ldap_result().


> This is correct - I'm proposing extending that to include a timeout for all 
> network communication. In some cases the APIs have a timeout but many do not 
> and this seems cleaner than requiring the client to pass a timeout for every 
> call which could conceivably perform network operations.

Since all the synchronous calls (ldap_*_s) are built on top of 
ldap_result(), if you set LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT then those calls will 
automatically use that value.  That's the behavior you're looking for, 
right?


> I understand the current situation but as a user it would feel more correct 
> for LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT to mean "try the next server if a response is 
> not obtained within this time", covering the additional class of failures 
> where an LDAP server is partially up as we cannot guarantee minute-level 
> admin response times to restart a failing server.

Hmm, what do you think the distinction between LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT 
and LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT should be?  (Neither of which should be confused with 
LDAP_OPT_TIMELIMIT, of course.)


Philip Guenther