Re: Stats collection on Windows

On Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 03:38:28AM -0400, mark(at)mark(dot)mielke(dot)cc wrote:
> Once upon a time, when I played with this stuff (I mostly use UNIX, not
> Windows), I concluded to myself that HANDLE was process-local, and that
> it was allocated. Meaning - it won't be re-used until you CloseHandle().
> It's best then, to think of HANDLE as a opaque object. Regardless, of
> whether it is process-local or not, until you run CloseHandle(), it is
> yours to keep, and it won't be re-used.

HANDLE is process local? That is worse then, because then there's no
guarentee that each process will see a different identifier.

The stats collector identifies processes by their process id, which
they get using getpid(). If instead they used a handle for their own
process (GetCurrentProcess() always returns -1, but you can apparently
clone it to get a real handle), you have no idea whether that handle is
unique amongst backends, because it's process local.

The stats collector doesn't have any open handles for the backend, it's
just a way for backends to identify themselves. It appears that process
handles are not up to the task either...

Do we have a plan C?
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.