Re: [libvirt] virConnectClose question
2010/10/19 Radek Hladik <radek(a)eadresa.cz>:
Hello,
I did find out that in some cases virConnectClose does not close the
connection at all. It only returns -1 which by the documentation means
error:
Returns: 0 in case of success or -1 in case of error.
Check virGetLastError() for the error.
But there is no other indication of what error it is. I am almost
sure that
it is because some open domains or other libvirt objects. If this is the
case it would be good to add notice like: "You need to free all
domains,....,etc before calling virConnectClose". And is there any
possibility how to force closing the connection? I know that it is a good
programming manner to close all objects before closing the master object but
I did run into this in php-libvrit development and it is quite painful.
PHP is keeping a list of all resources (objects from libvirt) and is calling
my destructors to close it. Unfortunately there are some problems with this:
* when garbage collector clears my resource my destructor is not called. It
is probably my mistake that I do not set it correctly somewhere but I am not
able to find out where.
* I can not influence the order of calls. It seems that there were some
discussions and that for quite some time PHP is calling destructors in
reverse order of creation. That would be good but I am not sure whether it
is granted.
The problem with this all is that if I for some reason fail to free some
domain object the connection is not closed. But as PHP does reuse threads
the connection will be open forever and connection limit for libvirtd get
drained very fast.
So basically my question is: should I implement some list of all objects I
did create and free them before calling virConnectClose or is there any
other way how to "terminate" libvirt connection for good?
Radek
Okay, all libvirt objects like connection, domain, storage pool etc
are reference counted. When you lookup a domain over a connection then
the domain adds an additional reference to the connection. This
ensures that the connection is open as long as there are objects that
have been looked up over it.
You don't need to free all objects before you can close the
connection. You just need to match all virConnectOpen calls by a
virConnectClose call and all lookup calls for other objects by the
matching free calls.
virConnectPtr conn = virConnectOpen("qemu:///system", 0); // conn.refs = 1
virDomainPtr domain = virDomainLookupByName(conn, "vm1"); // conn.refs
= 2, domain.refs = 1
...
virConnectClose(conn); // conn.refs = 1, but conn is still open
because domain has a reference to it
virDomainFree(domain); // conn.refs = 0, domain.refs = 0, domain gets
freed and releases its reference to conn, no conn gets closed
So virConnectClose returning -1 has nothing to do with the order of
close/free calls.
I think you can only make virConnectClose return -1 when you call it
on an invalid or already closed connection.
Matthias