[Rd] Segfault on read.socket with long message

[Russell Almond]

I'm trying to implement a connection between two processes using a 
simple socket mechanism.  The messages are rather long object stored as 
JSON.

R is crashing with a segmentation fault when I try to read my test 
message (which is 5305 bytes long).  I first send the length in bytes 
and then I send the actual message.

Here is my R code:

library(jsonlite)
library(futile.logger)
listenerloop <- function (port) {
   flog.trace("Opening Socket on port %d",port)
   sock <- make.socket("localhost",port,server=TRUE)
   on.exit({
     close.socket(sock)
     flog.trace("Closing Socket on port %d",port)
     })
   repeat {
     ## Input a hunk of stuff up to a blank line.
     output <- character()
     repeat {
       inlen <- read.socket(sock,loop=TRUE)
       flog.trace("Got message of length %s",inlen)
       if (inlen=="quit") break
       inmess <- fromJSON(read.socket(sock,as.integer(inlen)),false)
       outmess <- doProcess(inmess)
       output <- toJSON(outmess)
       flog.trace("Sending message of length %s",nchar(output))
       write.socket(sock,paste(nchar(output),"\n"))
       write.socket(sock,output)
     }
   }
}

doProcess() is the payload, but it is not getting that far.  Instead I get:

 > listenerloop(12525)
TRACE [2020-05-11 15:21:00] Opening Socket on port 12525
TRACE [2020-05-11 15:21:03] Got message of length 5305
{"StudentRecord":null,"Message":{"_id":624,"app":"ecd://terc.edu/Zoombinis/","uid":2,"context":"PIZZA_PASS1","sender":"DataArcade","mess":"Last 
Transaction","timestamp":"1570279373.109","processed":false,"data":{"PP29_N_Rejects_Current_Z":0,"PP106_Avg

  *** caught segfault ***
address 0x7ffdf533d0a8, cause 'memory not mapped'

Traceback:
  1: read.socket(sock, as.integer(inlen))
  2: fromJSON(read.socket(sock, as.integer(inlen)), false)
  3: listenerloop(12525)

I have two questions:

1) Can somebody file a bug report on this?  I strongly suspect that 
there is an uncaught error in read.socket().  I'm happy to help, but I 
don't have access to bugzilla.

2) Anybody know how to read/write long messages to a socket in R?

Thanks in advance.
   --Russell Almond




-- 
Russell G. Almond
https://ralmond.net
almond using acm.org