Re: [pyOpenSSL] Does PKey.generate_key lock the GIL?

[Phil M. <p.m...@im...>]

On 25/11/11 13:12, Tobias Oberstein wrote:
> I am using PyOpenSSL from within Twisted and want to generate new keys without blocking the Twisted networking.
>
> To do so, I use the deferToThread() Twisted feature, which runs functions on a thread from a background thread pool.
>
> However,
>
> PKey.generate_key
>
> still seems to block everything.
>
> Does above function lock the GIL?

Other way round. The GIL is held unless you explicitly release it, which 
the current source code for that function does not seem to:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~exarkun/pyopenssl/trunk/view/head:/OpenSSL/crypto/pkey.c#L39

So AFAICT yes, it will block forever.

Perhaps you could shell out to "openssl rsa" in a subprocess. Not ideal, 
but it won't require source code changes.