Author: sdi2000064 - Konstantinos Kanellakis

This project implements a server-client application for conducting a pre-election poll. The server, called poller, listens for client connections, receives votes, and stores them in a log file. The client, called pollSwayer, reads a list of voter names and votes from an input file and sends them to the server.

1. Compilation/Execution:

   • Compile the server (poller) and client (pollSwayer) applications using the following command:

     make all
     

   • Run the server (poller) with the following command:

     ./poller [portnum] [numWorkerthreads] [bufferSize] [poll-log] [poll-stats]
     

   • Run the client (pollSwayer) with the following command:

     ./pollSwayer [serverName] [portNum] [inputFile.txt]
     

2. Scripts:

   • Use the following scripts for various tasks:
     • create_input.sh: Generates an input file with random voter names and votes.

       ./create_input.sh politicalParties.txt numLines
       

     • tallyVotes.sh: Counts the number of votes each party received from the input file.

       ./tallyVotes.sh inputFile
       

     • processLogFile.sh: Counts the number of votes for each party from the poll-log file.

       ./processLogFile.sh poll-log
       

3. Checking Results:

   • To check if the poller and tallyVotes results match, run the following commands:

     cmp pollerResultsFile tallyResultsFile
     sort -o poll-stats poll-stats
     cmp tallyResultsFile poll-stats
     

• The server implementation utilizes multiple threads and synchronization mechanisms such as mutexes and condition variables.
• The main thread accepts client connections and places them in a buffer for worker threads to handle.
• Worker threads read requests from the clients, record votes, and update the log and stats files.
• The server ensures synchronization between the master thread and worker threads using condition variables and mutexes.

• The client application creates a thread for each line in the input file.
• Each thread connects to the server and sends the voter's name and vote.
• The client continues to read lines from the input file until all votes are sent.

• The implementation does not have any memory leaks.
• The server runs until it receives a SIGINT (Ctrl+C) signal.
• The results are stored in the poll-stats file when the server terminates.

The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with system programming in a Unix environment. It involves threading and network communication, specifically implementing a multithreaded server and a client application.

The server application, poller, runs a pre-election poll. It accepts connections from clients, receives votes, and stores them in log and stats files.

The client application, pollSwayer, reads voter names and votes from an input file and sends them to the server for recording.

Bash scripts are provided to assist in debugging the program and generating input files. These scripts include create_input.sh, tallyVotes.sh, and processLogFile.sh.

For more details on each problem and the implementation, please refer to the comments in the code files or send me a message.