Hi All,

In several perl scripts I have, I'm using IPC::Cache to share a list of MAC addresses between processes as well as some operational flags (4 flags of 0 or 1).

The problem is that over the last week or so, the access calls to 'set' or 'get' values from the IPC::Cache object are very slow.

I don't know the internals behind IPC::Cache, but I'm wondering what could be causing it to be slow.

Does one process reading or writing to the cache object lock/block all others until it's finished?

Is there something else (other than file system) I could use to replace IPC::Cache?

Thanks
Anubis.

I'm not familiar with that package (or with perl,) but my guess is that the buffer is full and a process is trying to clear it by sending the data over the network. The slowness of "set" is probably because of that, whereas the slowness of "get" could be caused by the process retaining the lock until the data is transmitted successfully. An alternate theory is that the buffer is being expanded by allocating a new buffer and copying the old data into it. This is a better question for the maintainer, however.

This is actually a good opportunity to strengthen your open-source skills. If you think it's something that's caused by the package and not by your code, you can try to track down the problem and fix it in the package's source. It really makes you think about things analytically, and it's rewarding to be able to fix something you previously thought you had no control over.

Kevin Barry