# ZMQ and Distributed

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/zmq-and-distributed/75669>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** zmq, parallel, distributed\
**Created:** [February 2, 2022, 3:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/zmq-and-distributed/75669 "2022-02-02T15:53:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hagi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/hagi/32/3678_2.png) [@hagi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/hagi)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2022, 3:53pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/zmq-and-distributed/75669/1 "2022-02-02T15:53:15Z")

</div>

I have a problem using ZMQ with Distributed on another worker. This is my first try with Distributed package.

I am working on a project, where I receive data from a measurement device using the ZMQ protocol.  
Every second I get a message with the data. I want to collect e.g. 30 seconds. before I do some post-processing. Since the messages keep coming in I wanted to use a separate process that fills the buffer and do the post-processing on the main process. In principle I could do this with @async, but I want to spread the computational load since otherwise I can’t do this in real-time.

```julia
using Distributed
addprocs(1)
@everywhere using Pkg
@everywhere Pkg.activate(".")
@everywhere using ZMQ
@everywhere using Dates # for the time stamp
@everywhere include("./test/distributed_zmq.jl") # Contains the functions I later use
@everywhere sock, ctx = init_zmq_client(url = source_url)

```

This seems to work fine.  
I then start the function that fills the buffer on the second process

```julia
s = @spawnat 2 zmq_fill_buffer(sock; buffer_len = 10)

```

As expected this gives me the `Future` for this process.  
`Future(2, 1, 17, ReentrantLock(nothing, Base.GenericCondition{Base.Threads.SpinLock}(Base.InvasiveLinkedList{Task}(nothing, nothing), Base.Threads.SpinLock(0)), 0), nothing)`

When I want to fetch the data I get an error:

```julia
On worker 2:
StateError("Socket operation on non-socket")
Stacktrace:
  [1] _send
    @ ~/.julia/packages/ZMQ/R3wSD/src/comm.jl:14
  [2] #send#13
    @ ~/.julia/packages/ZMQ/R3wSD/src/comm.jl:45
  [3] send
    @ ~/.julia/packages/ZMQ/R3wSD/src/comm.jl:43 [inlined]
  [4] read_zmq_meta_data
    @ ~/git/02-pipesense/PipeSense.jl/test/distributed_zmq.jl:34
  [5] #zmq_fill_buffer#4
    @ ~/git/02-pipesense/PipeSense.jl/test/distributed_zmq.jl:69
  [6] #13
    @ /opt/julia/julia-1.7.1/share/julia/stdlib/v1.7/Distributed/src/macros.jl:83
  [7] #103
    @ /opt/julia/julia-1.7.1/share/julia/stdlib/v1.7/Distributed/src/process_messages.jl:274
  [8] run_work_thunk
    @ /opt/julia/julia-1.7.1/share/julia/stdlib/v1.7/Distributed/src/process_messages.jl:63
  [9] run_work_thunk
    @ /opt/julia/julia-1.7.1/share/julia/stdlib/v1.7/Distributed/src/process_messages.jl:72
 [10] #96
    @ ./task.jl:423

```

On line 34 I send the request to get the data:

```julia
ZMQ.send(sock, Float64(0.0))

```

Can I make the Socket available to a different process?  
If yes, what is the problem?  
If not, is there a better way of filling the buffer?

It seems somehow similar to:

> [@Distributed IO works only on main process but not on workers](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/distributed-io-works-only-on-main-process-but-not-on-workers/36105):
>
> I am playing around with the parallel functionality in Julia and trying to make a specific worker load a big feather file. Surprisingly this works, since fetch returns a DataFrame: using Distributed addprocs(4) @everywhere using Feather @everywhere function ReadData(path) data = Feather.read(path) return data end c = @spawnat 1 ReadData("datapath") result=fetch(c) If I change the @spawnat macro to worker 2, 3 or 5 like this: c = @spawnat 2 ReadData("datapath") I get the following e…

Thanks for any help,  
Martin

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![efficiencynuts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@efficiencynuts](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/efficiencynuts)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2022, 9:28am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/zmq-and-distributed/75669/2 "2022-12-10T09:28:20Z")

</div>

Didn’t look into this, but what does zmq\_fill\_buffer return?