medusa as win32 service

[Mark Hammond]

Robin Becker wrote:

> I wonder if this is the right way to write a medusa(asyncore) server
> with the win32all framework. Other example services seem to create an
> event to pass the stop signal from SvcStop into a separate termination
> method, but I'm unsure how that would mix with the polling loop. 
> 
> This simple framework seems to start and stop OK, but I wonder if I'm
> missing some obvious race or something.

SvcStop will be called on a different thread.  I don't know enough about 
socket semantics to know if this is an issue.

When I've tried to play with async based services, IIRC there were a few 
problems if a connection existed at shutdown time.  If "close" could 
ever block, then Windows would get quite upset.  If a "close()" ever 
fails, then I guess there is a risk that the main loop will not 
terminate, again making Windows upset.  But as above, I don't know 
enough about the framework to comment on the risks here.

So really, the issues are all Python related - the win32 interactions 
appear OK, assuming close could never block.

For the SpamBayes project, our framework needed a "clean shutdown" to 
save our databases etc, so we ended up using urlopen to connect to a 
special "shutdown" URL.  I didn't write that part, so I don't understand 
if there was a better option.

Hope this helps a little :)

Mark.