[kaffe] RMI bugs and quirks

[Dalibor Topic]

Hi,

here's some more information on the RMI merge from Classpath:

I've had to replace the RMISecurityManager from Classpath by the old, 
insecure RMISecurityManager from kaffe, since it allows basically any 
action to be performed, in contrary to the spec. But unfortunately, 
using a more restrictive RMISecurityManager, like Classpath's, leads to 
kaffe not being able to load and link native libraries, in particular 
java.net support, which means no Sockets, which in turn kills RMI 
completely.

So use RMI for now with care. My plan is to switch to Classpath's 
SecurityManager eventually. I belive that an implementation of 
AccessControl and Policy file parsing will be necessary, as well, in 
order to allow privileged actions to work.

I've also patched up RMIC a little, on a few occassions. I'll be posting 
the patches to the Classpath mailing lists for inclusion in their source 
tree.

Unfortunately, there are still some bugs. Running the code from the 
"Getting Started Using RMI" document[1], I've found some problems with 
RMI/serialization code, where I'd need some advice on how to go about 
fixing it.

In order to repeat what I have, you'll need to fetch 
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/rmi/archives/getStart.zip
unzip getStart.zip
cd getStart
mkdir examples
mkdir examples/hello
mv *.java *.html examples/hello
kjc examples/hello/*.java
rmic examples.hello.HelloImpl
rmiregistry &

and then

bash-2.05a$ kaffe examples/hello/HelloImpl
HelloImpl err: Try to read exception object but failed; nested exception is:
         java.io.IOException: Data annotated to class was not consumed.112
java.rmi.UnmarshalException: Try to read exception object but failed; 
nested exception is:
         java.io.IOException: Data annotated to class was not consumed.112
    at gnu.java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteCall.executeCall 
(UnicastRemoteCall.java:196)
    at gnu.java.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke (UnicastRef.java:206)
    at gnu.java.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl_Stub.rebind 
(RegistryImpl_Stub.java:230)
    at java.rmi.Naming.rebind (Naming.java:103)
    at examples.hello.HelloImpl.main (HelloImpl.java:66)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Data annotated to class was not consumed.112
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject (ObjectInputStream.java:232)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject (ObjectInputStream.java:272)
    at gnu.java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteCall.executeCall 
(UnicastRemoteCall.java:191)
    ...4 more

so there seems to be something cheesy with class annotations. Grepping 
for annotateClass in gnu/java/rmi/ finds it in 
libraries/javalib/gnu/java/rmi/server/RMIObjectOutputStream.java .

The spec says that:
"The annotateClass method is called while a Class is being serialized, 
and after the class descriptor has been written to the stream. 
Subclasses may extend this method and write other information to the 
stream about the class. This information must be read by the 
resolveClass method in a corresponding ObjectInputStream subclass."

So I'd expect gnu/java/rmi/server/RMIObjectInputStream.java to read in 
the annotated information. Which it does, though I'm not sure if it does 
so correctly. I'd be grateful if someone with more insight into 
serialization could take a look at what's goping wrong.

cheers,
dalibor topic


[1] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/rmi/getstart.doc.html