'rbuf_fill': execution expired (Timeout::Error)

December 10th, 2007

This is a fun little exception in Ruby that you have to catch explicitly in order to get hold of it in a rescue block.

Say you had the following:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

require 'net/pop3'
begin
  Net::POP3.auth_only(@server, @port, @username, @password)
rescue => e
  write_error_to_logfile(e)
  do_something_sensible
end

And the mail server could not be reached due to transient network problems -> that is, you are getting a socket timeout error.

Well, your code in the rescue block won’t get executed! Even though the script raises an Error!

Why is this?

Simple answer, because Timeout::Error is not a subclass of StandardError, it is a subclass of the Interrupt class.

So, that means you have to catch it explicitly, like so:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

require 'net/pop3'
begin
  Net::POP3.auth_only(@server, @port, @username, @password)
rescue => e
  write_error_to_logfile(e)
  do_something_sensible
rescue Timeout::Error => e
  write_error_to_logfile(e)
  do_something_sensible_for_timeout
end

And all will be good again, error caught!

blogLater

Mikel

Posted by mikel Filed in

11 Responses to “'rbuf_fill': execution expired (Timeout::Error)”

  1. xuxu Says:
    December 18th, 2007 at 05:10 PM

    Thank you very much ;)

  2. Bryn Thomas Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:14 PM

    Thanks, I had this same error and this cleared up my incorrect expectation that everything derived from a root Exception class.

  3. Colin Curtin Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 04:57 AM

    http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/09/06/rubys-exception-hierarchy

    Every exception derives from Exception, so you can do

    begin # Thing that throws Timeouts, anything… rescue Exception => e puts ”#{e}\n#{e.backtrace.join(”\n”)}” end

  4. dace Says:
    February 21st, 2008 at 08:14 AM

    this was a huge help!

  5. Jan Rüegg Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 08:43 PM

    This was e great help to me too… Thanks a lot!

  6. Robert Aganauskas Says:
    March 15th, 2008 at 02:01 AM

    Thanks, this error was really driving me crazy.

  7. Jarek Says:
    June 13th, 2008 at 11:23 PM

    Thanks !

  8. Roob Says:
    August 27th, 2008 at 02:20 AM

    that was very helpful, thanks!

  9. Murali Says:
    September 11th, 2008 at 08:54 PM

    Thanks. this saved my debugging time.

  10. Dirceu Jr. Says:
    September 26th, 2008 at 10:54 AM

    Thx!!!

  11. wc Says:
    November 8th, 2008 at 12:04 AM

    thank you, this was very helpful

Leave a Reply