From: "André" <andre.nho@...>
Date: 2007-12-13T04:05:19+09:00
Subject: Ruby/Gnome app hangs when http'ing from inside a thread (linux only)

Hello,

I'm writing a Ruby/Gnome application that auto-updates itself from the
internet when a new version is available.

The auto-update function runs in a different thread, so the user won't
even notice that the application is checking for a new version.

It all works fine, EXCEPT when there's no network connection. In this
case, the WHOLE application simply hangs for one or two minutes, with
no regard for the fact that this code is running in a thread, or that
the timeout property is set.

And this error only happens on linux. Has anybody ever experienced
anything like it?

A sample code follows:

Thread.new do
	http = Net::HTTP.new('myhost.com')
	http.open_timeout = 5
	http.read_timeout = 5
	http.start
	resp = http.get('/somefile.html')
	puts resp.body
end

André