UnsupportedOperationException after Netty 4.1.60 update

What version of gRPC-Java are you using?

1.36.0

What is your environment?

macOS, jdk11

What did you expect to see?

Server can process a request which contains content-length header.

What did you see instead?

A change in Netty 4.1.60 introduces usage of the Http2Headers#setLong(..) method, but grpc-java’s custom header implementations do not implement this method (e.g. throw UnsupportedOperationException).

java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
	at io.grpc.netty.AbstractHttp2Headers.setLong(AbstractHttp2Headers.java:465)
	at io.grpc.netty.AbstractHttp2Headers.setLong(AbstractHttp2Headers.java:26)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder$FrameReadListener.onHeadersRead(DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder.java:403)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder$FrameReadListener.onHeadersRead(DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder.java:347)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder$PrefaceFrameListener.onHeadersRead(DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder.java:707)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.Http2InboundFrameLogger$1.onHeadersRead(Http2InboundFrameLogger.java:56)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2FrameReader$2.processFragment(DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java:483)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2FrameReader.readHeadersFrame(DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java:491)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2FrameReader.processPayloadState(DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java:254)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2FrameReader.readFrame(DefaultHttp2FrameReader.java:160)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.Http2InboundFrameLogger.readFrame(Http2InboundFrameLogger.java:41)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder.decodeFrame(DefaultHttp2ConnectionDecoder.java:181)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.Http2ConnectionHandler$FrameDecoder.decode(Http2ConnectionHandler.java:378)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.Http2ConnectionHandler$PrefaceDecoder.decode(Http2ConnectionHandler.java:242)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.http2.Http2ConnectionHandler.decode(Http2ConnectionHandler.java:438)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.ByteToMessageDecoder.decodeRemovalReentryProtection(ByteToMessageDecoder.java:508)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.ByteToMessageDecoder.callDecode(ByteToMessageDecoder.java:447)
	at io.netty.handler.codec.ByteToMessageDecoder.channelRead(ByteToMessageDecoder.java:276)
	at io.netty.channel.AbstractChannelHandlerContext.invokeChannelRead(AbstractChannelHandlerContext.java:379)
	at io.netty.channel.AbstractChannelHandlerContext.invokeChannelRead(AbstractChannelHandlerContext.java:365)
	at io.netty.channel.AbstractChannelHandlerContext.fireChannelRead(AbstractChannelHandlerContext.java:357)
	at io.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline$HeadContext.channelRead(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:1410)
	at io.netty.channel.AbstractChannelHandlerContext.invokeChannelRead(AbstractChannelHandlerContext.java:379)
	at io.netty.channel.AbstractChannelHandlerContext.invokeChannelRead(AbstractChannelHandlerContext.java:365)
	at io.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline.fireChannelRead(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:919)
	at io.netty.channel.nio.AbstractNioByteChannel$NioByteUnsafe.read(AbstractNioByteChannel.java:166)
	at io.netty.channel.nio.NioEventLoop.processSelectedKey(NioEventLoop.java:719)
	at io.netty.channel.nio.NioEventLoop.processSelectedKeysOptimized(NioEventLoop.java:655)
	at io.netty.channel.nio.NioEventLoop.processSelectedKeys(NioEventLoop.java:581)
	at io.netty.channel.nio.NioEventLoop.run(NioEventLoop.java:493)
	at io.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor$4.run(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:989)
	at io.netty.util.internal.ThreadExecutorMap$2.run(ThreadExecutorMap.java:74)
	at io.netty.util.concurrent.FastThreadLocalRunnable.run(FastThreadLocalRunnable.java:30)
	at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:834)

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. upgrade netty dependency to 4.1.60.Final
2. send a request with content-length header
3. server should fail to process the request with the exception above.

[ejona86]

Yeah, most users are using grpc-netty-shaded and so won’t have this trouble. But we do want to help those using grpc-netty to allow them to upgrade Netty. We should implement the missing method and backport it to a 1.36.1 and 1.35.1.

[ejona86]

Is there any plan to upgrade the shaded version?

No, not for the CVEs as they do not impact gRPC. If you are using grpc-netty-shaded there is no issue.

Also, https://github.com/netty/netty-jni-util/issues/5 prevents us from upgrading to recent releases. (But like I said before, we do want to be compatible with new releases for grpc-netty.)