Remoting and concurrent socket connections

[Thomas René Sidor]

Hello

Having been trying to find the root of this problem for several days I
now hope that you can help me.

I'm implementing a distributed file system - consisting of, at the
moment, a testing client (C), a http-server (H) and a file server (F) -
with the following setup:

H acts as an external interface to F, that is any given C connect to
one H in order to access files at F. The communication between H and F
uses remoting, ie. F registers a FileServerObject which interfaces the
local file system which acts as the file storage. Testing H and F alone
works fine.
The communication between C and H uses regular sockets and uses the
HTTP1.1 protocol for communication. These two work fine together.

The problem then is when I try to test the system as a whole. When
trying to authorize (using a custom implemented certificate driven
authorization protocol) H suddenly starts to act weird when reading
data from the NetworkStream based on the socket connected to C. It
simply stops reading data at the stream at various points in the
authorization process.

Somehow the remoting setup effects the communication with the clients.
Sometimes all works perfectly, other times certificates or encrypted
secrets are never read at H. How can this be?
No exceptions are ever throws, the NetworkStram.Read(...) simply blocks
as no data are available. Have the remoting framework somehow consumed
the data?

I've included the method that reads from the NetworkStream for you to
see.

If you have any questions that would clarify my problem, please feel
free to ask.

private byte[] ReadPut()
{
//Validate for content-length header
if (!_lastRequest.Headers.ContainsKey("Content-Length"))
{
WriteHttpResponse(HttpResponseCodes.BadRequest, "Content-Length
header missing");
return null;
}
else
{
int contentLength =
int.Parse(_lastRequest.Headers["Content-Length"]);
//Log("Content-Length: " + contentLength);
byte[] fullContent = new byte[contentLength];

int readBytesTotal = 0;
while (readBytesTotal < contentLength)
{
int readBytes = _networkStream.Read(fullContent,
readBytesTotal, (contentLength - readBytesTotal < 1024 ? contentLength
- readBytesTotal : 1024));
readBytesTotal += readBytes;

if (readBytes == 0)
break;
}
if (readBytesTotal == 0)
return null;
else
{

//
Console.WriteLine(ASCIIEncoding.Default.GetString( fullContent));
return fullContent;
}
}
}

Best regards,
Thomas René Sidor

[Thomas René Sidor]

Ok, apparently the code does not work even if i disable the remoting
part at this moment. Communication between the client and http server
stops at random, although some data always get send. I.e. I send a http
request with some headers and a body - the headers are read using a
StreamReader created on top of the NetworkStream - this always works
without problems. The problem occurs when reading the body (using the
previously posted method) from the NetworkStream.

Any suggestions as to how this can be?

The client is implemented using HttpWebReqeust / HttpWebResponse and
the server accepts connections using a TcpListener which accepts
TcpClients.

For the purpose of development I have the client start the http server
and file server processes - could this influence on the
networkstream?

Below is the code that accepts new incoming connections.

private void ListeningLoop()
{
Log("Starting HttpServer");
bool exitLoop = false;

TcpListener listener = new TcpListener(new
IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse("127.0.0.1"), _port));
// Registering TcpChannel for remoting
TcpChannel channel = new TcpChannel();
ChannelServices.RegisterChannel(channel, true);

Log("HttpServer up and running. Listening on port " + _port);
listener.Start();
// Listening for incomming connection to the HttpServer
while (true)
{
// If we for some reason need to stop the server, neat cleanup
can be handled here
if (exitLoop)
{
Cleanup();
break;
}
try
{
TcpClient client = listener.AcceptTcpClient();
ConnectionHandlerInstance connectionHandler = new
ConnectionHandlerInstance(client);
Thread connectionHandlerTread = new Thread(new
ThreadStart(connectionHandler.HandleConnection));
connectionHandlerTread.Start();
}
catch (Exception)
{
//Log(e.ToString());
Log("Failed to accept connection");
}
}
}
I would appreciate any feedback.

Best reagards,
Thomas René Sidor