Fix handling of connection timeouts in outgoing http requests (#8400)

* Remove `on_timeout_cancel` from `timeout_deferred`

The `on_timeout_cancel` param to `timeout_deferred` wasn't always called on a
timeout (in particular if the canceller raised an exception), so it was
unreliable. It was also only used in one place, and to be honest it's easier to
do what it does a different way.

* Fix handling of connection timeouts in outgoing http requests

Turns out that if we get a timeout during connection, then a different
exception is raised, which wasn't always handled correctly.

To fix it, catch the exception in SimpleHttpClient and turn it into a
RequestTimedOutError (which is already a documented exception).

Also add a description to RequestTimedOutError so that we can see which stage
it failed at.

* Fix incorrect handling of timeouts reading federation responses

This was trapping the wrong sort of TimeoutError, so was never being hit.

The effect was relatively minor, but we should fix this so that it does the
expected thing.

* Fix inconsistent handling of `timeout` param between methods

`get_json`, `put_json` and `delete_json` were applying a different timeout to
the response body to `post_json`; bring them in line and test.

Co-authored-by: Patrick Cloke <clokep@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Erik Johnston <erik@matrix.org>

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/synapse/http/proxyagent.py b/synapse/http/proxyagent.py
index 332da02a8d..e32d3f43e0 100644
--- a/synapse/http/proxyagent.py
+++ b/synapse/http/proxyagent.py
@@ -44,8 +44,11 @@ class ProxyAgent(_AgentBase):
             `BrowserLikePolicyForHTTPS`, so unless you have special
             requirements you can leave this as-is.
 
-        connectTimeout (float): The amount of time that this Agent will wait
-            for the peer to accept a connection.
+        connectTimeout (Optional[float]): The amount of time that this Agent will wait
+            for the peer to accept a connection, in seconds. If 'None',
+            HostnameEndpoint's default (30s) will be used.
+
+            This is used for connections to both proxies and destination servers.
 
         bindAddress (bytes): The local address for client sockets to bind to.
 
@@ -108,6 +111,15 @@ class ProxyAgent(_AgentBase):
         Returns:
             Deferred[IResponse]: completes when the header of the response has
                  been received (regardless of the response status code).
+
+                 Can fail with:
+                    SchemeNotSupported: if the uri is not http or https
+
+                    twisted.internet.error.TimeoutError if the server we are connecting
+                        to (proxy or destination) does not accept a connection before
+                        connectTimeout.
+
+                    ... other things too.
         """
         uri = uri.strip()
         if not _VALID_URI.match(uri):