As reported by @limulus in the answer I accepted, this was a bug in Net::HTTPS version 6.00. Always be wary of fresh .0 releases. Here's the relevant diff between the buggy and fixed version of that module:
D:\Opt\Perl512.32 :: diff lib\Net\HTTPS.pm site\lib\Net\HTTPS.pm
6c6
< $VERSION = "6.00";
---
> $VERSION = "6.02";
75,78c75,80
< # The underlying SSLeay classes fails to work if the socket is
< # placed in non-blocking mode. This override of the blocking
< # method makes sure it stays the way it was created.
< sub blocking { } # noop
---
> if ($SSL_SOCKET_CLASS eq "Net::SSL") {
> # The underlying SSLeay classes fails to work if the socket is
> # placed in non-blocking mode. This override of the blocking
> # method makes sure it stays the way it was created.
> *blocking = sub { };
> }
Relevance: It is annoying to see your HTTPS client block indefinitely because the connection endpoint is unreliable.
This experiment is easy to set up and replay at home. You just need two things, a tarpit to trap an incoming client, and a Perl script. The tarpit can be set up using netcat:
nc -k -l localhost 9999 # on Linux, for multiple requests
nc -l -p 9999 localhost # on Cygwin, for one request only
Then, point the script to this tarpit:
use strict;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request::Common;
print 'LWP::UserAgent::VERSION ', $LWP::UserAgent::VERSION, "\n";
print 'IO::Socket::SSL::VERSION ', $IO::Socket::SSL::VERSION, "\n";
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( timeout => 5, keep_alive => 1 );
$ua->ssl_opts( timeout => 5, Timeout => 5 ); # Yes - see note below!
my $rsp = $ua->request( GET 'https://localhost:9999' );
if ( $rsp->is_success ) {
print $rsp->as_string;
} else {
die $rsp->status_line;
}
What is this going to do? Well, connect to the port opened by NetCat, and then ... hang. Indefinitely. At least in terms of developer time. I mean it might time out after ten minutes or two hours, but I haven't checked; the specified timeout doesn't take effect, not on Linux, and not on Windows (Win32, haven't checked Cygwin).
Versions used:
LWP::UserAgent::VERSION 6.02
IO::Socket::SSL::VERSION 1.44
# on Linux
LWP::UserAgent::VERSION 6.02
IO::Socket::SSL::VERSION 1.44
# on Win32
Now for the timeout and Timeout parameters. The former is the name of the parameter for LWP::UA, the latter is the name for IO::Socket::SSL, used via LWP::Protocol::https. (Incidentally, why is metacpan HTTPS? Well, at least it's not a tarpit.) I am somehow hoping to have these parameters passed along :)
Just so you know, keep_alive doesn't have anything to do with the timeout not working, I verified that empirically. :)
Anyway, before digging deeper, does anyone know what's going on here and how to make the timeout work with HTTPS? Hard to believe I'm the first person running into this.
This is a result of the Net::HTTPS module overriding the blocking method of IO::Socket with a noop. Upgrading to the latest Net::HTTP package should fix this.