Pipe to and from child process is not working

Question

I am trying to learn pipes and I am trying out this program:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>  
#include<unistd.h> 
#include<errno.h>
#include<sys/types.h>
#include<fcntl.h>

#define MAXLINE 100
void main(){

int pipe1[2],pipe2[2];
pid_t childpid;
 if(pipe(pipe1)<0){
            perror("Unable to create the pipe for pipe1");
            exit(-1);
    }
    if(pipe(pipe2)<0){
            perror("Unable to create the pipe for pipe1");
            exit(-1);
    }
    childpid=fork();
    printf("The child PID is:%d\n",childpid);
    if(childpid==0){
            printf("In the child process");
            close(pipe1[1]);
            close(pipe2[0]);
            server(pipe1[0],pipe2[1]);
            exit(0);
    }

    close(pipe1[0]);
    close(pipe2[1]);

    client(pipe2[0],pipe1[1]);
    waitpid(childpid,NULL,0);
    exit(0);
}

void client(int readfd,int writefd){

    int n,len;
    char buff[MAXLINE];
    printf("Please enter the name of the file to be read:");
    fgets(buff,MAXLINE,stdin);
    len=strlen(buff);
    if(buff[len-1]=='\n')
            len--;

    write(writefd,buff,len);
    printf("File name written into the pipe\n");
    printf("The num of bytes written are:\n",read(readfd,buff,MAXLINE));
    while((n-read(readfd,buff,MAXLINE))>0){
            printf("Trying to read the content\n");
            write(STDOUT_FILENO,buff,n);
    }
}

void server(int readfd,int writefd){

    int fd,n;
    char buff[MAXLINE + 1];
    write(writefd,"Yello in the server process",strlen("Yello in the server process"));

    if((n=read(readfd,buff,MAXLINE))==0)
            perror("End of file while reading");
    buff[n]='\0';
    if((fd=fopen(buff,O_RDONLY))<0){
            snprintf(buff+n,sizeof(buff)-n,"Can't open, %s",strerror(errno));
            n=strlen(buff);
            write(writefd,buff,n);
    }
    while( (n=read(fd,buff,MAXLINE))>0){
            write(writefd,buff,n);
            close(fd);
    }
}

The problem is I enter the file name and the program just exits. I tried to gdb the child process by setting set "follow-fork-mode child", and still nothing happens. Any ideas as to where I could be going wrong?

Ok, some more additional debugging info is: I set the follow-fork-mode to child.and it is causing a segmentation fault at the opening of the file.

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. [Switching to process 28025] 0x00197f08 in _IO_file_fopen () from /lib/libc.so.6

Answer 1

This code in client() looks suspicious:

while((n-read(readfd,buff,MAXLINE))>0){

Surely, that should be:

while ((n = read(readfd, buff, MAXLINE)) > 0)
{

The change from - to = is the important one, of course; the rest are cosmetic (and one is even controversial).

---

You should also pay attention to compiler warnings. Given:

int fd,n;
...
if((fd=fopen(buff,O_RDONLY))<0){

There's no way this should be compiling without major warnings; fopen() returns a FILE *, not a file descriptor (int).

---

You also seem to have some odd communications. The server sends a message to the client before reading the file name from the client. The client, OTOH, does not necessarily read that message separately; it gets a glob of information and reports how many bytes it got. That may have included some of the file as well as the introductory message.

---

You shouldn't close a file in the loop that is reading from it:

while( (n=read(fd,buff,MAXLINE))>0){
        write(writefd,buff,n);
        close(fd);
}

The close should be outside the loop.

---

This code more or less works; it is messier than I'd like, but it does more or less work.

#include <errno.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>  
#include <unistd.h> 

#define MAXLINE 100

static void server(int readfd, int writefd);
static void client(int readfd, int writefd);

int main(void)
{
    int pipe1[2], pipe2[2];
    pid_t childpid;
    if (pipe(pipe1)<0)
    {
        perror("Unable to create the pipe for pipe1");
        exit(-1);
    }
    if (pipe(pipe2)<0)
    {
        perror("Unable to create the pipe for pipe2");
        exit(-1);
    }
    childpid = fork();
    printf("The child PID is:%d\n", childpid);
    if (childpid == 0)
    {
        printf("In the child process\n");
        close(pipe1[1]);
        close(pipe2[0]);
        server(pipe1[0], pipe2[1]);
        exit(0);
    }

    close(pipe1[0]);
    close(pipe2[1]);

    client(pipe2[0], pipe1[1]);
    waitpid(childpid, NULL, 0);
    return 0;
}

static void client(int readfd, int writefd)
{
    int n, len;
    char buff[MAXLINE];
    printf("Please enter the name of the file to be read:");
    fgets(buff, MAXLINE, stdin);
    len = strlen(buff);
    if (buff[len-1]=='\n')
            len--;

    write(writefd, buff, len);
    printf("File name (%.*s) written into the pipe\n", len, buff);
    printf("The num of bytes written are: %d\n", (int)read(readfd, buff, MAXLINE));
    while ((n = read(readfd, buff, MAXLINE)) > 0)
    {
            printf("Trying to read the content\n");
            write(STDOUT_FILENO, buff, n);
    }
}

static void server(int readfd, int writefd)
{
    int fd, n;
    char buff[MAXLINE + 1];

    fprintf(stderr, "Server: %d\n", (int)getpid());
    write(writefd, "Yello in the server process", strlen("Yello in the server process"));

    if ((n = read(readfd, buff, MAXLINE))==0)
        perror("End of file while reading");
    buff[n] = '\0';
    if ((fd = open(buff, O_RDONLY)) < 0)
    {
            snprintf(buff+n, sizeof(buff)-n, "Can't open, %s", strerror(errno));
            n = strlen(buff);
            write(writefd, buff, n);
    }
    else
    {
        while ((n = read(fd, buff, MAXLINE)) > 0)
        {
            if (write(writefd, buff, n) != n)
            {
                fprintf(stderr, "Write failed in server\n");
                break;
            }
        }
        close(fd);
    }
}

Note that the code does not try using a file descriptor that it fails to open. It does not crash; the n-read(...) problem is one major part of the trouble, comments notwithstanding. The misuse of fopen() for open() was another major part of the trouble.