How and why to use backdoor? (or how to debug services) about nameko HOT 2 CLOSED

Hi,

There are a few options for debugging. (i)pdb is one of them, and pdb.set_trace() inside a service method should work just like any other python process. What didn't work as expected here?

The backdoor is a way to get a shell inside the process of a running service, possibly one that's been running for a while, and could even be enabled in production. It looks like you have encountered a bug (it shouldn't crash when not finding netcat, but instead try other alternatives. Maybe you could raise a separate issue about the crash, and post some more info (os, python version) to help us debug that.

When the backdoor works, you get a python shell prompt, from where you can interact with the objects inside the service process, e.g. the container, running workers, dependencies and other objects.

I think the mailing list https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/nameko-dev is a better place for the general debugging discussion. Perhaps you could post a simplified example of what you are trying with pdb and how it's not behaving as expected?

Obviously you could also separately add logging statements (or even print) for debugging, but we should be able to do better. If by "eager mode" you mean turning rpc calls into function calls that you can step through, that's something I've thought about but not really spent any time one.

Hope this helps,
David

from nameko.

Closing this issue to encourage discussion to move to the mailing list.

@rochacbruno if you have more questions please ask them there, and if you're able please report the backdoor bug (here, as an issue). Thanks

from nameko.