[SlimDevices: Beta] Re: Crash whilst using Network test plugin

[Andy Grundman]

On Oct 3, 2006, at 1:50 PM, max.spicer wrote:

>
> Andy Grundman;141939 Wrote:
>> You could also fire off a separate short-lived process if you'd  
>> like to
>> still use FTP.  See the scanner code
>> for an example on how to do this.
> Am I right in thinking that this would involve bundling a pre-compiled
> process to do the ftp on Win32 platforms without Active Perl?

Good question, since you can't fork in Windows I suppose this would  
have to be the case.  Or you could script ftp.exe maybe...   The  
alternative is to not fork if on Windows, and tell the user they must  
use an FTP server on the local network or it will have performance  
problems.  You should also tell them to use an IP address and not a  
domain name when entering their server so you don't have any DNS- 
related blocking.


>
> Are threads simply a complete no-no?  I'd definitely like to fix this
> if it's going to be a cause of server instability.  However, I'm  
> loathe
> to go down the route of compiled exe's unless it's absolutely  
> necessary.
> I have, after all, had no instability problems whilst running this
> plugin for the past few months.

Yeah they don't work right, we have some C libraries that aren't  
thread-safe.  I tried to get threads to work under Windows when I was  
playing with the web and stream forking code, but it would always crash.