How to stop WSGI from hanging apache

Question

I have django running through WSGI like this :

<VirtualHost *:80>
    WSGIScriptAlias / /home/ptarjan/django/django.wsgi
    WSGIDaemonProcess ptarjan processes=2 threads=15 display-name=%{GROUP}
    WSGIProcessGroup ptarjan
    Alias /media /home/ptarjan/django/mysite/media/
</VirtualHost>

But if in python I do :

def handler(request) :
    data = urllib2.urlopen("http://example.com/really/unresponsive/url").read()

the whole apache server hangs and is unresponsive with this backtrace

#0  0x00007ffe3602a570 in __read_nocancel () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#1  0x00007ffe36251d1c in apr_file_read () from /usr/lib/libapr-1.so.0
#2  0x00007ffe364778b5 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libaprutil-1.so.0
#3  0x0000000000440ec2 in ?? ()
#4  0x00000000004412ae in ap_scan_script_header_err_core ()
#5  0x00007ffe2a2fe512 in ?? () from /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_wsgi.so
#6  0x00007ffe2a2f9bdd in ?? () from /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_wsgi.so
#7  0x000000000043b623 in ap_run_handler ()
#8  0x000000000043eb4f in ap_invoke_handler ()
#9  0x000000000044bbd8 in ap_process_request ()
#10 0x0000000000448cd8 in ?? ()
#11 0x0000000000442a13 in ap_run_process_connection ()
#12 0x000000000045017d in ?? ()
#13 0x00000000004504d4 in ?? ()
#14 0x00000000004510f6 in ap_mpm_run ()
#15 0x0000000000428425 in main ()

on Debian Apache 2.2.11-7.

Similarly, can we be protected against :

def handler(request) :
    while (1) :
        pass

In PHP, I would set time and memory limits.

Answer 1

If I understand well the question, you want to protect apache from locking up when running some random scripts from people. Well, if you're running untrusted code, I think you have other things to worry about that are worst than apache.

That said, you can use some configuration directives to adjust a safer environment. These two below are very useful:

• WSGIApplicationGroup - Sets which application group WSGI application belongs to. It allows to separate settings for each user - All WSGI applications within the same application group will execute within the context of the same Python sub interpreter of the process handling the request.

• WSGIDaemonProcess - Configures a distinct daemon process for running applications. The daemon processes can be run as a user different to that which the Apache child processes would normally be run as. This directive accepts a lot of useful options, I'll list some of them:

  • user=name | user=#uid, group=name | group=#gid:

    Defines the UNIX user and groupname name or numeric user uid or group gid of the user/group that the daemon processes should be run as.

  • stack-size=nnn

    The amount of virtual memory in bytes to be allocated for the stack corresponding to each thread created by mod_wsgi in a daemon process.

  • deadlock-timeout=sss

    Defines the maximum number of seconds allowed to pass before the daemon process is shutdown and restarted after a potential deadlock on the Python GIL has been detected. The default is 300 seconds.

You can read more about the configuration directives here.

Answer 2

It is not 'deadlock-timeout' you want as specified by another, that is for a very special purpose which will not help in this case.

As far as trying to use mod_wsgi features, you instead want the 'inactivity-timeout' option for WSGIDaemonProcess directive.

Even then, this is not a complete solution. This is because the 'inactivity-timeout' option is specifically to detect whether all request processing by a daemon process has ceased, it is not a per request timeout. It only equates to a per request timeout if daemon processes are single threaded. As well as help to unstick a process, the option will also have side effect of restarting daemon process if no requests arrive at all in that time.

In short, there is no way at mod_wsgi level to have per request timeouts, this is because there is no real way of interrupting a request, or thread, in Python.

What you really need to implement is a timeout on the HTTP request in your application code. Am not sure where it is up to and whether available already, but do a Google search for 'urllib2 socket timeout'.