Hello, my name is Greg.
I've just started using python after many years of C programming, and I'm also new to the list. I wanted to clarify this first, so that maybe I will get a little less beating for my stupidity :)
I use python3 and Linux on arch x86 (production will be on x86_64, though this shouldn't matter much).
The application that I'm presently working on is a network server. It would use separate processes to accept the connections, and to do the work (much like how apache prefork does). One process accept()s on the original socket and the received socket (client socket) will be read for a request. After the request is received and parsed this process (the controller) will choose one from its' children that is most capable of handling the said request. It would then pass the file descriptor through a socketpair to the appropriate children and go handle the next client. All works fine and smooth, but I realized that I need sendmsg()/recvmsg() to pass the FD. Since these are not implemented in the python socket module, and Linux has no other way to do this, I'm stuck. Fell flat on my face, too :)
Browsing the net I've found a patch to the python core (http://bugs.python.org/issue1194378), dated 2005.
First of all, I would like to ask you guys, whether you know of any way of doing this FD passing magic, or that you know of any 3rd party module / patch / anything that can do this for me.
Since I'm fairly familiar with C and (not that much, but I feel the power) python, I would take the challenge of writing it, given that the above code is still somewhat usable. If all else fails I would like to have your help to guide me through this process.
Thanks
Kalman Gergely