Django + FastCGI - randomly raising OperationalError

Question

I'm running a Django application. Had it under Apache + mod_python before, and it was all OK. Switched to Lighttpd + FastCGI. Now I randomly get the following exception (neither the place nor the time where it appears seem to be predictable). Since it's random, and it appears only after switching to FastCGI, I assume it has something to do with some settings.

Found a few results when googleing, but they seem to be related to setting maxrequests=1. However, I use the default, which is 0.

Any ideas where to look for?

PS. I'm using PostgreSQL. Might be related to that as well, since the exception appears when making a database query.

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 86, in get_response
   response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/sites.py", line 140, in root
   if not self.has_permission(request):

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/sites.py", line 99, in has_permission
   return request.user.is_authenticated() and request.user.is_staff

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/middleware.py", line 5, in __get__
   request._cached_user = get_user(request)

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/__init__.py", line 83, in get_user
   user_id = request.session[SESSION_KEY]

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py", line 46, in __getitem__
   return self._session[key]

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/sessions/backends/base.py", line 172, in _get_session
   self._session_cache = self.load()

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/contrib/sessions/backends/db.py", line 16, in load
   expire_date__gt=datetime.datetime.now()

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/manager.py", line 93, in get
   return self.get_query_set().get(*args, **kwargs)

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 304, in get
   num = len(clone)

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 160, in __len__
   self._result_cache = list(self.iterator())

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 275, in iterator
   for row in self.query.results_iter():

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/sql/query.py", line 206, in results_iter
   for rows in self.execute_sql(MULTI):

 File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/db/models/sql/query.py", line 1734, in execute_sql
   cursor.execute(sql, params)

OperationalError: server closed the connection unexpectedly
       This probably means the server terminated abnormally
       before or while processing the request.

Answer 1

Possible solution: http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/browse_thread/thread/2c7421cdb9b99e48

Until recently I was curious to test this on Django 1.1.1. Will this exception be thrown again... surprise, there it was again. It took me some time to debug this, helpful hint was that it only shows when (pre)forking. So for those who getting randomly those exceptions, I can say... fix your code :) Ok.. seriously, there are always few ways of doing this, so let me firs explain where is a problem first. If you access database when any of your modules will import as, e.g. reading configuration from database then you will get this error. When your fastcgi-prefork application starts, first it imports all modules, and only after this forks children. If you have established db connection during import all children processes will have an exact copy of that object. This connection is being closed at the end of request phase (request_finished signal). So first child which will be called to process your request, will close this connection. But what will happen to the rest of the child processes? They will believe that they have open and presumably working connection to the db, so any db operation will cause an exception. Why this is not showing in threaded execution model? I suppose because threads are using same object and know when any other thread is closing connection. How to fix this? Best way is to fix your code... but this can be difficult sometimes. Other option, in my opinion quite clean, is to write somewhere in your application small piece of code:

from django.db import connection 
from django.core import signals 
def close_connection(**kwargs): 
    connection.close() 
signals.request_started.connect(close_connection) 

Not ideal thought, connecting twice to the DB is a workaround at best.

---

Possible solution: using connection pooling (pgpool, pgbouncer), so you have DB connections pooled and stable, and handed fast to your FCGI daemons.

The problem is that this triggers another bug, psycopg2 raising an InterfaceError because it's trying to disconnect twice (pgbouncer already handled this).

Now the culprit is Django signal request_finished triggering connection.close(), and failing loud even if it was already disconnected. I don't think this behavior is desired, as if the request already finished, we don't care about the DB connection anymore. A patch for correcting this should be simple.

The relevant traceback:

 /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py in __call__(self=<django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x24fb210>, environ={'AUTH_TYPE': 'Basic', 'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/storage/test', 'GATEWAY_INTERFACE': 'CGI/1.1', 'HTTPS': 'off', 'HTTP_ACCEPT': 'application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING': 'gzip, deflate', 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION': 'Basic dGVzdGU6c3VjZXNzbw==', 'HTTP_CONNECTION': 'keep-alive', 'HTTP_COOKIE': '__utma=175602209.1371964931.1269354495.126938948...none); sessionid=a1990f0d8d32c78a285489586c510e8c', 'HTTP_HOST': 'www.rede-colibri.com', ...}, start_response=<function start_response at 0x24f87d0>)
  246                 response = self.apply_response_fixes(request, response)
  247         finally:
  248             signals.request_finished.send(sender=self.__class__)
  249 
  250         try:
global signals = <module 'django.core.signals' from '/usr/local/l.../Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/core/signals.pyc'>, signals.request_finished = <django.dispatch.dispatcher.Signal object at 0x1975710>, signals.request_finished.send = <bound method Signal.send of <django.dispatch.dispatcher.Signal object at 0x1975710>>, sender undefined, self = <django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler object at 0x24fb210>, self.__class__ = <class 'django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler'>
 /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/dispatch/dispatcher.py in send(self=<django.dispatch.dispatcher.Signal object at 0x1975710>, sender=<class 'django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler'>, **named={})
  164 
  165         for receiver in self._live_receivers(_make_id(sender)):
  166             response = receiver(signal=self, sender=sender, **named)
  167             responses.append((receiver, response))
  168         return responses
response undefined, receiver = <function close_connection at 0x197b050>, signal undefined, self = <django.dispatch.dispatcher.Signal object at 0x1975710>, sender = <class 'django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler'>, named = {}
 /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/db/__init__.py in close_connection(**kwargs={'sender': <class 'django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler'>, 'signal': <django.dispatch.dispatcher.Signal object at 0x1975710>})
   63 # when a Django request is finished.
   64 def close_connection(**kwargs):
   65     connection.close()
   66 signals.request_finished.connect(close_connection)
   67 
global connection = <django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2.base.DatabaseWrapper object at 0x17b14c8>, connection.close = <bound method DatabaseWrapper.close of <django.d...ycopg2.base.DatabaseWrapper object at 0x17b14c8>>
 /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/db/backends/__init__.py in close(self=<django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2.base.DatabaseWrapper object at 0x17b14c8>)
   74     def close(self):
   75         if self.connection is not None:
   76             self.connection.close()
   77             self.connection = None
   78 
self = <django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2.base.DatabaseWrapper object at 0x17b14c8>, self.connection = <connection object at 0x1f80870; dsn: 'dbname=co...st=127.0.0.1 port=6432 user=postgres', closed: 2>, self.connection.close = <built-in method close of psycopg2._psycopg.connection object at 0x1f80870>

Exception handling here could add more leniency:

/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/db/__init__.py

   63 # when a Django request is finished.
   64 def close_connection(**kwargs):
   65     connection.close()
   66 signals.request_finished.connect(close_connection)

Or it could be handled better on psycopg2, so to not throw fatal errors if all we're trying to do is disconnect and it already is:

/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg/django/db/backends/__init__.py

   74     def close(self):
   75         if self.connection is not None:
   76             self.connection.close()
   77             self.connection = None

Other than that, I'm short on ideas.