[Catalyst] Troubleshooting Help Please

[James R. Leu]

See my comment at the end.

On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 07:10:53AM -0700, J. Shirley wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 6:47 AM, Paul Cory <pcory at wcpss.net> wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I've Googled repeatedly, and RTFMed, and I've reached a point where I have
> > to ask for help.
> >
> > I have a Catalyst Web App that requires users to log in before they can do
> > anything (it's a front end for managing mailing list subscriptions).
> >
> > This runs on Apache 1.3/mod_perl 1/perl 5.8.8/MySQL 5.0 on SLES 10. Apache,
> > perl and mod_perl are compiled from source, not the distribution versions.
> >
> > The problem is that as the day progresses, and the application sees more and
> > more use, login behavior becomes inconsistent.
> >
> > It starts out working flawlessly. Then, after a while, valid logins start to
> > occasionally fail. Trying again gets you in - at the start. As time passes,
> > the problem gets progressively worse and it eventually gets to the point
> > where people quit trying because the success rate for logging in drops to
> > 10% or less.
> >
> > By fail, I mean you go to the log in screen, put in a valid username and
> > password combination, and then get seamlessly redirected to the log in
> > screen, as if you had just arrived fresh to the app.
> >
> > Restarting Apache solves the problem, at least for a while. And then things
> > begin to degrade again...
> >
> > I've verified that the problem is not end user error. Once you get it to
> > recognize your login, the system work fine.
> >
> > Other Web Apps I've written, using HTML::Mason and running on this exact
> > same server under mod_perl do not exhibit this behavior.
> >
> > I've checked the Apache error log, and I can't find any related errors.
> >
> > I'm using the following plug-in for authentication:
> >
> >         Authentication
> >                 Session
> >                        Session::Store::FastMmap
> >                        Session::State::Cookie
> >
> >
> > The problem did not appear in testing, only in production.
> >
> > Any ideas on where to look, or what to try?
> >
> > FWIW, here's the login controller code (no promises on it being great -
> > programming is something I've learned in self-defense). The controller
> > handles log ins for both the regular and admin side of the application.
> > First it checks the regular users realm, and, if that fails,  then the admin
> > users realm (two separate databases) .
> >
> >
> >
> > package esubscription::Controller::Login;
> >
> > use strict;
> > use warnings;
> > use base 'Catalyst::Controller';
> >
> >
> >
> > sub index : Private {
> >    my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
> >
> >        # Get the username and password from form
> >        my $login = $c->request->params->{login} || "";
> >        my $password = $c->request->params->{password} || "";
> >
> >        # If the username and password values were found in form
> >        if ($login && $password) {
> >            # Attempt to log the user in
> >            if ( $c->authenticate({login => $login, password => $password}) )
> > {
> >                # If successful, then let them use the application
> >                $c->response->redirect($c->uri_for('/'));
> >                return;
> >            } else {
> >
> >                if (  $c->authenticate({login => $login, password =>
> > $password}, 'admin') ) {
> >
> >  $c->response->redirect($c->uri_for('/admin/'));
> >                                        return;
> >
> >                }
> >
> >                else { # Set an error message
> >
> >                 $c->stash->{message} = "Bad username or password.";
> >                 $c->stash->{login} = "$login";
> >                }
> >            }
> >        }
> >
> >        # If either of above don't work out, send to the login page
> >        $c->stash->{template} = 'templates/forms/login_form.mas';
> > }
> >
> >
> >
> > 1;
> >
> >
> >
> > Also, there's this snippet in the root controller that handles checking for
> > valid user:
> >
> >        # If a user doesn't exist, force login
> >
> >        if (!$c->user_exists) {
> >
> >                $c->response->redirect($c->uri_for('login'));
> >                # Return 0 to cancel 'post-auto' processing and prevent use
> > of application
> >                return 0;
> >        }
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks for the help!
> >
> >
> > Paul Cory
> > WCPSS Webmaster
> > pcory at wcpss.net
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> Please also send your applications configuration so we can see your
> auth store.  I do just have to ask though... why such ancient
> software?  Apache 1 and MP1?  Ouch.
> 
> Off the top of my head, you are running out of space on your cache dir
> (how big is your tmp dir?).  If you change your Session::Store or
> setup for a larger cache it'd probably alleviate the problem.

... or running out of file descriptors.  Do a 'lsof -p <pid>' where PID
is that of the httpd children.  I see a file descriptor leak in
Catalyst::Engine::finalize_body in my cat app.

See this post for more info:

    http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/catalyst/2007-November/015817.html

> -J
> 
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-- 
James R. Leu
jleu at mindspring.com
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