From e417bd2d262f703212d4d671498420e554105639 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:41:29 -0700
Subject: small cleanup to pid file handling + documentation

It's pointless to try and stat a file before trying to read it.
Instead just try opening it and rescue ENOENT because it
would've been racy anyways.

Additionally add some comments to keep us from forgetting
why we did the things we did with the pid file management.
---
 lib/unicorn.rb | 35 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lib/unicorn.rb b/lib/unicorn.rb
index 86458ac..1d22442 100644
--- a/lib/unicorn.rb
+++ b/lib/unicorn.rb
@@ -84,6 +84,17 @@ module Unicorn
       self.init_listeners = options[:listeners] ? options[:listeners].dup : []
       self.config = Configurator.new(options.merge(:use_defaults => true))
       self.listener_opts = {}
+
+      # we try inheriting listeners first, so we bind them later.
+      # we don't write the pid file until we've bound listeners in case
+      # unicorn was started twice by mistake.  Even though our #pid= method
+      # checks for stale/existing pid files, race conditions are still
+      # possible (and difficult/non-portable to avoid) and can be likely
+      # to clobber the pid if the second start was in quick succession
+      # after the first, so we rely on the listener binding to fail in
+      # that case.  Some tests (in and outside of this source tree) and
+      # monitoring tools may also rely on pid files existing before we
+      # attempt to connect to the listener(s)
       config.commit!(self, :skip => [:listeners, :pid])
       self.orig_app = app
     end
@@ -170,6 +181,11 @@ module Unicorn
         end
       end
       unlink_pid_safe(pid) if pid
+
+      # not using O_EXCL here since we may be (intentionally) clobbering an
+      # existing file.  Avoiding /all/ possible race conditions with the pid
+      # file is hard so we don't unlink it before writing nor do we rename()
+      # since that's clobbering, too...
       File.open(path, 'wb') { |fp| fp.syswrite("#$$\n") } if path
       self.set_pid(path)
     end
@@ -589,7 +605,9 @@ module Unicorn
     end
 
     # unlinks a PID file at given +path+ if it contains the current PID
-    # useful as an at_exit handler.
+    # still potentially racy without locking the directory (which is
+    # non-portable and may interact badly with other programs), but the
+    # window for hitting the race condition is small
     def unlink_pid_safe(path)
       (File.read(path).to_i == $$ and File.unlink(path)) rescue nil
     end
@@ -597,14 +615,15 @@ module Unicorn
     # returns a PID if a given path contains a non-stale PID file,
     # nil otherwise.
     def valid_pid?(path)
-      if File.exist?(path) && (wpid = File.read(path).to_i) > 1
-        begin
-          Process.kill(0, wpid)
-          return wpid
-        rescue Errno::ESRCH
-        end
+      wpid = File.read(path).to_i
+      wpid <= 0 and return nil
+      begin
+        Process.kill(0, wpid)
+        return wpid
+      rescue Errno::ESRCH
+        # don't unlink stale pid files, racy without non-portable locking...
       end
-      nil
+      rescue Errno::ENOENT
     end
 
     def load_config!
-- 
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