Using "shutdown sessions server" through master socket

[Jens Wahnes]

Hi,

on my Haproxy instances in HTTP mode, I have some long-lived websocket 
connections. When doing a reload of Haproxy (e.g. because of a config 
change), this means that the old process will keep running with the 
existing websocket connections. The websocket connections can be lasting 
for a long time (many days). So there can be old Haproxy processes 
piling up in the meantime, as all these old websocket connections are 
kept open.

To overcome a possible memory shortage, I have a script to look after 
the old processes with websocket sessions still running. The script 
shuts down websocket sessions in the old processes through commands via 
the master socket. Depending on how many old processes there are, it's 
taking different action as to when to shut down these old websocket 
sessions.

One thing I noticed when setting this up is that I cannot use the 
"shutdown sessions server" command. For instance, if I give the command 
'@!123456 shutdown sessions server my_websockets/server1', Haproxy will 
reply "Proxy is disabled."

Instead, I have to send individual commands of the type '@!123456; 
shutdown session 0xabcdef012345' (with the session ids derived from a 
'@!123456 show sess' command). This works fine, and after all websocket 
sessions have been shut down, the old process will exit (and the clients 
will open up a new websocket connection attached to the current Haproxy 
process).

Is the "Proxy is disabled." reply the expected response when issuing 
'shutdown sessions server' to an old process via the master socket or 
should Haproxy be able to shut down all of the old sessions for me 
instead of my script iterating through the list of open sessions? In 
other words, is this behavior a bug or a feature?

Thanks,
Jens