[squid-users] "helperHandleRead: unexpected read" for helper function

[Justin Michael Schwartzbeck]

I think I may have found the problem. I am updating my source, so the lines
I mentioned before won't count here. I will get back.

On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 9:22 PM Justin Michael Schwartzbeck <
justinmschw at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all... I would really appreciate some help.
>
> So I have written an external acl helper in C++ that talks to a REST API
> that I developed. Here is a github link (don't worry, it is pretty short,
> and the only parts you need to look at are lines 46, 52, 58 and 60):
>
>
> https://github.com/e2guardian-angel/squid-acl-category-helper/blob/main/category_host.cpp
>
> I have it all configured in my squid.conf:
> external_acl_type host_category_helper %ACL %DST
> /usr/local/bin/squidhelpers/host_category_helper
> acl searchengines external host_category_helper
> ...
> ssl_bump bump searchengines
> ssl_bump none all
>
> and as far as I can tell, it is working: search engines are being matched
> (for the most part) and decrypted, as expected, and nothing else is being
> decrypted.
>
> However, I am seeing a million of the following lines:
> 2021/05/08 02:04:57| helperHandleRead: unexpected read from
> host_category_helper #Hlpr6, 4 bytes 'ERR
>
> I notice it only seems to be happening for the ERR (no match), I don't see
> it for the OK (match).
>
> I googled this issue and see a lot of threads here about making sure there
> is only one line of output per line of input. I am definitely seeing this
> when I just run the helper manually:
> $ docker exec -it squid /usr/local/bin/squidhelpers/host_category_helper
>
> searchengines google.com
> OK
> searchengines facebook.com
> ERR
> searchengines imdb.com
> ERR
>
>
> So it seems that it should be working as expected. I don't see any other
> newlines. I saw also some snippet about concurrency being an issue, this
> could be the case, since I did see this one-off in the squid output:
> 2021/05/08 02:04:59| helperHandleRead: unexpected read from
> host_category_helper #Hlpr6, 8 bytes 'ERR
> ERR
> '
>
> But this doesn't make sense to me since only one helper appears to be
> running:
> 2021/05/08 01:52:04| helperOpenServers: Starting 1/5
> 'host_category_helper' processes
>
>
> Is there anything glaring here that could be the issue? Is it indeed a
> concurrency problem? I would have assumed that each helper (there are 5 of
> them) would have their own stdin/stdout and be writing to/from it rather
> than everyone at once. It also seems a little suspicious that I am only
> seeing this for ERR, not OK... you are supposed to print ERR when there is
> not a match, correct?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated... I am getting so close to having
> this fully functional.
>
> -Justin
>
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