Background
I am developing an Android App which provides a simple HTTP/HTTPS server. If the HTTPS serving is configured then on every connection an increasing native memory usage is observed which eventually leads to an app crash (oom), while using the HTTP configuration keeps the native memory usage relative constant. The app's Java VM keeps relative constant in both configurations.
The app serves an HTML page which contains a javascript with periodic polling (one json poll every second), so calling the app page using the HTTPS configuration and keeping the page open for several hours will lead to the mentioned out-of-memory because of increasing native memory usage. I have tested many SSLServerSocket and SSLContext configurations found on internet with no luck.
I observe the same problem on various Android devices and various Android versions beginning with 2.2 up to 4.3.
The code for handling client requests is the same for both configurations HTTP/HTTPS. The only difference between the two configurations is the setup of the server socket. While in the case of HTTP server socket one single line similar to this "ServerSocket serversocket = new ServerSocket(myport);" does the job, in the case of HTTPS server setup the usual steps for setting up the SSLContext are taken -- i.e. setting up the keymanager and initializing the SSLContext. For now, I use the default TrustManager.
Need For Your Advice
Does somebody know about any memory leak problems in Android's default TLS Provider using OpenSSL? Is there something special I should consider to avoid the leak in the native memory? Any hint is highly appreciated.
Update: I have also tried both TLS providers: OpenSSL and JSSE by explicitly giving the provider name in SSLContext.getInstance( "TLS", providerName ). But that did not change anything.
Here is a code block which demonstrates the problem. Just create a sample app put it into the bottom of the main activity's onCreate and build & run the app. Make sure that your Wifi is on and call the HTML page by following address:
https://android device IP:9090
Then watch the adb logs, after a while you will see the native memory beginning to increase.
new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
final int PORT = 9090;
SSLContext sslContext = SSLContext.getInstance( "TLS" ); // JSSE and OpenSSL providers behave the same way
KeyManagerFactory kmf = KeyManagerFactory.getInstance( KeyManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm() );
KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance( KeyStore.getDefaultType() );
char[] password = KEYSTORE_PW.toCharArray();
// we assume the keystore is in the app assets
InputStream sslKeyStore = getApplicationContext().getResources().openRawResource( R.raw.keystore );
ks.load( sslKeyStore, null );
sslKeyStore.close();
kmf.init( ks, password );
sslContext.init( kmf.getKeyManagers(), null, new SecureRandom() );
ServerSocketFactory ssf = sslContext.getServerSocketFactory();
sslContext.getServerSessionContext().setSessionTimeout(5);
try {
SSLServerSocket serversocket = ( SSLServerSocket )ssf.createServerSocket(PORT);
// alternatively, the plain server socket can be created here
//ServerSocket serversocket = new ServerSocket(9090);
serversocket.setReceiveBufferSize( 8192 );
int num = 0;
long lastnatmem = 0, natmemtotalincrease = 0;
while (true) {
try {
Socket soc = (Socket) serversocket.accept();
Log.i(TAG, "client connected (" + num++ + ")");
soc.setSoTimeout(2000);
try {
SSLSession session = ((SSLSocket)soc).getSession();
boolean valid = session.isValid();
Log.d(TAG, "session valid: " + valid);
OutputStream os = null;
InputStream is = null;
try {
os = soc.getOutputStream();
// just read the complete request from client
is = soc.getInputStream();
int c = 0;
String itext = "";
while ( (c = is.read() ) > 0 ) {
itext += (char)c;
if (itext.contains("\r\n\r\n")) // end of request detection
break;
}
//Log.e(TAG, " req: " + itext);
} catch (SocketTimeoutException e) {
// this can occasionally happen (handshake timeout)
Log.d(TAG, "socket timeout: " + e.getMessage());
if (os != null)
os.close();
if (is != null)
is.close();
soc.close();
continue;
}
long natmem = Debug.getNativeHeapSize();
long diff = 0;
if (lastnatmem != 0) {
diff = natmem - lastnatmem;
natmemtotalincrease += diff;
}
lastnatmem = natmem;
Log.i(TAG, " answer the request, native memory in use: " + natmem / 1024 + ", diff: " + diff / 1024 + ", total increase: " + natmemtotalincrease / 1024);
String html = "<!DOCTYPE html><html><head>";
html += "<script type='text/javascript'>";
html += "function poll() { request(); window.setTimeout(poll, 1000);}\n";
html += "function request() { var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlHttp.open( \"GET\", \"/\", false ); xmlHttp.send( null ); return xmlHttp.responseText; }";
html += "</script>";
html += "</head><body onload=\"poll()\"><p>Refresh the site to see the inreasing native memory when using HTTPS: " + natmem + " </p></body></html> ";
byte[] buffer = html.getBytes("UTF-8");
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter( os );
pw.print("HTTP/1.0 200 OK \r\n");
pw.print("Content-Type: text/html\r\n");
pw.print("Content-Length: " + buffer.length + "\r\n");
pw.print("\r\n");
pw.flush();
os.write(buffer);
os.flush();
os.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
soc.close();
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
} catch (SocketException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}).start();
-- EDIT --
I have uploaded a sample app project called SSLTest for eClipse which demonstrates the problem:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=59536
-- UPDATE --
Good news: today the reported Android issue above was identified and proper submissions were made to fix the memory leak. For more details see the link above.
I imagine this would be a substantial time investment, but I see that Valgrind has been ported to Android. You could try getting that up and running. Of course, if you find there's an internal memory leak, there isn't a lot you can do about it except attempt to get the bug fixed in future Android releases.
As a workaround, you could make your application multi-process and put the https service in a separate process. That way you could restart it periodically, avoiding OOM. You might also have to have a third process just accepting port 443 connections and passing them on to the https worker - in order to avoid tiny outages when the https worker is restarted.
This also sounds like a substantial time investment :) But it would presumably successfully avoid the problem.
--- EDIT: More detail ---
Yes, if you have a main application with its own UI, a worker process for handling SSL and a worker process for accepting the SSL requests (which as you say probably can't be 443), then on top of your normal Activity classes, you would have two Service classes, and the manifest would place them in separate processes.
Handling SSL process: Rather than waiting for an OOM to crash the service, the service could monitor its own Debug.getNativeHeapSize(), and explicitly restart the service when it increased too much. Either that, or restart automatically after every 100 requests or so.
Handling listening socket process: This service would just listen on the TCP port you choose and pass on the raw data to the SSL process. This bit needs some thought, but the most obvious solution is to just have the SSL process listen on a different local port X (or switch between a selection of different ports), and the listening socket process would forward data to port X. The reason for having the listening socket process is to gracefully handle the possibility that X is down - as it might be whenever you restart it.
If your requirements allow for there being occasional mini-outages I would just do the handling SSL process, and skip the listening socket process, it's a relatively simple solution then - not that different to what you'd do normally. It's the listening socket process that adds complexity to the solution...
Does it help to explicitly close the input stream? In the sample code the input stream seems to only be closed in the case of a SocketTimeoutException exception.
--EDIT--
You could rename run() to run2() and move the while loop into run() and remove it from run2() and see if that makes a difference? This couldn't be a solution but would tell you if any of the long-lived objects free up the memory when their references are dropped.
There is one detail I would recommend changing in your implementation.
Make a list of all your resource variables, for example Sockets, Streams, Writers, etc. Be sure to have the declaration outside your try statement and be sure to do cleanup / closing in the finally statement. I normally do something like this to be 100% sure:
InputStream in = null;
OutputStream out = null;
try {
//assign a proper value to in and out, and use them as needed.
} catch(IOException e) {
//normal error handling
} finally {
try {
in.close();
} catch(IOException e) {}
try {
out.close();
} catch(IOException e) {}
}
It looks a little bit confusing, but imagine you use your in Stream inside the try block and you get some Exception, then your Streams never get closed and that is a potential reason for memory leaks.
I cannot guarantee that this is the reason, but it should be a good startup point.
About managing your service. I had a lot of bad experiences with Android services because I was running them in the same thread as the GUI. Under some circumstances, Android will see some code that is executing for too long and kill your main process in order to protect from crashes. The solution I found was to follow the suggestion from this tutorial (look at point 4):
http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidServices/article.html
After this, my service just worked as expected and didn't interfere with my GUI Process.
Regards
Related
I have an Android app which is performing HTTP get requests in the background. I'll give some details of how this is performed shortly. I'll focus on describing the issue first.
I've observed in the debugger that OkHttp ConnectionPools are stacking up in the Threads window in Android Studio. This is concerning me as it seems to indicate a resource leak and over time these will increase indefinitely (it seems).
My main problem is that I have no idea why this would be happening. I'm almost certain that it's my fault, but I don't have a lead on what to look for. So my general question is:
"What might cause a new pool to be created each time a HTTP request is made?"
Firstly, here's the code I use to do the get request. Note that it's simplified, but I've run with this exact code and see the problem.
private TestResult test() {
final long startTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();
final String server = "connectivitycheck.gstatic.com";
URL url;
try {
url = new URL("http", SOME_PATH);
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
// We shouldn't get here since the url is well known
return new TestResult(
"failed to generate url " + e,
SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() - startTime
);
}
HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null;
int httpResponseCode;
try {
urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
urlConnection.setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);
urlConnection.setConnectTimeout(SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS);
urlConnection.setReadTimeout(SOCKET_TIMEOUT_MS);
urlConnection.setUseCaches(false);
InputStream is = urlConnection.getInputStream();
httpResponseCode = urlConnection.getResponseCode();
is.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
return new TestResult(
e,
SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() - startTime
);
} finally {
if (urlConnection != null)
urlConnection.disconnect();
}
if (httpResponseCode != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_NO_CONTENT) {
return new TestResult(
"invalid error code, expected 204 but got " + httpResponseCode,
SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() - startTime
);
}
return new TestResult(
SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() - startTime
);
}
So, when is this code run...?
Firstly let me say that I've tried running this code from my home activity on my app (in a separate thread - as HTTP isn't allowed on the main android thread). When I do that, everything is fine. I can make multiple requests and never see more than one pool.
The situation in which I run the code and see the issues is as follows:
I have a background Service
In that service I start a new Thread
In that thread I create an ExecutorService:
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
CompletionService<FutureResult> completionService = new ExecutorCompletionService<>(executorService);
Using that ExecutorService I submit a callable task which runs my test method (above).
Note that this may all sound convoluted but there's purpose to all of this. For one, the ExecutorService will be performing many other tasks other than just running the test method.
I've had a good look for hanging references that somehow might be keeping the underlying HTTP resources alive but I can't see any.
Does anyone with good knowledge of OkHttp know why this might happen? I'm hoping for some insight to help me uncover the problem.
The easiest way to find out is to set a breakpoint in the ConnectionPool constructor and run your app. That'll show who is creating it. My guess is it's an unrelated class like a crash reporter or analytics library.
For some reason HttpURLConnection appears to be buffering the upload data no matter what I try. I can show the progress percentage of the data, but it is clear that the progress advances way too fast while the data is not flowing at that high rate.
The receiving server is not in the intranet, but hosted somewhere. The edge router is throttling the upload bandwidth to 2mbit in order to simulate a slow network, and in the bandwidth graph of the router I can see the data rate graph for the development device. The WiFi AP also allows me to see a graph of the data rate, and it looks just like the one of the edge router, so no device in the intranet is buffering the data. It is definitely the development device (Nexus 5X)
The following is the code that is being used:
HttpURLConnection hucConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
//hucConnection.setUseCaches(false); // does not solve the issue
//hucConnection.setDefaultUseCaches(false); // does not solve the issue
//hucConnection.setAllowUserInteraction(true); // does not solve the issue
hucConnection.setConnectTimeout(6 * 1000);
hucConnection.setReadTimeout(30 * 1000);
hucConnection.setRequestProperty("content-type", "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
hucConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");
hucConnection.setDoInput(true);
hucConnection.setDoOutput(true);
// Data to transfer
byte[] bData = joTransfer.toString().getBytes("UTF-8");
int iDataLength = bData.length;
//hucConnection.setRequestProperty("content-transfer-encoding", "binary"); // does not solve the issue
// use compression
hucConnection.setRequestProperty("content-encoding", "deflate");
ByteArrayOutputStream stream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Deflater deflater = new Deflater(Deflater.DEFAULT_COMPRESSION);
DeflaterOutputStream zip = new DeflaterOutputStream(stream, deflater);
zip.write(bData);
zip.close();
deflater.end();
byte[] bZippedData = stream.toByteArray();
Integer iZippedDataLength = bZippedData.length;
int iChunk = 1000;
hucConnection.setChunkedStreamingMode(iChunk);
//hucConnection.setFixedLengthStreamingMode(iZippedDataLength); // does not solve the issue
hucConnection.connect();
OutputStream osOutputStream = hucConnection.getOutputStream();
// FROM HERE ---->>>
int iUploadedLength;
for (iUploadedLength = 0; iUploadedLength < iZippedDataLength - iChunk; iUploadedLength += iChunk) {
LogWrapper.e(TAG, "l -> f:" + iUploadedLength + " t:" + (iUploadedLength+iChunk));
osOutputStream.write(Arrays.copyOfRange(bZippedData, iUploadedLength , iUploadedLength+iChunk));
osOutputStream.flush();
}
LogWrapper.e(TAG, "r -> f:" + iUploadedLength + " t:" + iZippedDataLength);
osOutputStream.write(Arrays.copyOfRange(bZippedData, iUploadedLength, iZippedDataLength));
osOutputStream.flush();
osOutputStream.close();
// <<<---- TO HERE ---- XXXXXXXXX max 1 second XXXXXXXXX
// FROM HERE ---->>>
int iResponseCode = hucConnection.getResponseCode();
// <<<---- TO HERE ---- XXXXXXXXX about 10 seconds XXXXXXXXX
if (iResponseCode != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
...
I expected the calls to osOutputStream.flush(); to force the HttpURLConnection to send the data to the server, but for some reason that isn't happening.
It appears to get buffered somewhere, because after the osOutputStream.close(); and before the hucConnection.getResponseCode(); the data is getting uploaded to the server.
All the transfers (upload and download) are working properly, no data is damaged.
Is there a way to fix this, or an alternative to using HttpURLConnection? I've read that the Socket class does not have this problem, but I'm not sure if it handles redirects and stuff like that properly. I don't need to use cookies or some other stuff.
The aprox. 10 seconds it takes for hucConnection.getResponseCode(); to finish is when about 3MB are uploaded (3MB*8b/B = 24Mb, 24Mb/2Mb/s = 12s), the data that is downloaded is getting sent after that call. The progress of the downloaded data is precise.
Is it possible that a 3rd party library is altering HttpURLConnection's behavior and doing some proxying? Like Firebase or something? I already disabled Crashlytics, but I think that Firebase also does some kind of stats gathering (response time). I think I had some strange issues about 1-2 months ago in another app, where I was getting a Proxy error issue in the domain name resolution, as if something inside of Android was proxying network traffic.
I'm about to give OkHttp a try, one of their recipies has a Post Streaming example (https://github.com/square/okhttp/wiki/Recipes)
Update: I implemented it using okhttp3, following the above mentioned recipie. I have the exact same problem there.
This is on Android 8.1
The server is an nginx instance.
I also ran the app on a Genymotion emulator instance, same OS, and it looks like it's better there, yet the problem still seems to be present, a bit. While radical throttling on the edge router has no effect on the Nexus 5X, it does have an effect on the emulator. But nonetheless, even the emulator upload tracking precision leaves much to be desired.
Would it make sense to use a WebSocket connection for that? That would be my last resort.
The logic is for downloading used in AsyncTask, but I think, that it should be the same (just a switching input>output and so on)
InputStream inputStream = null;
try {
try {
OutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(documentFile, false);
try {
inputStream = httpConn.getInputStream();
byte[] buffer = new byte[4 * 1024]; // or other buffer size
long downloaded = 0;
long target = dataLength;
int readed;
long updateSize = target / 10;
long updateHelp = 0;
while ((readed = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
downloaded += readed;
updateHelp += readed;
if (updateHelp >= updateSize) {
updateHelp = 0;
publishProgress(downloaded, target);
}
outputStream.write(buffer, 0, readed);
if (isCancelled()) {
return false;
}
}
outputStream.flush();
outputStream.close();
return true;
} catch (Exception e) {
return false;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
if (inputStream != null) {
inputStream.close();
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
I'm communication with a server through a tcp socket connection, i'm able to read lines that ends with \n fine, however when the line is not terminated (ends in \n) i'm not able to read it. I tried the following but it didn't work and caused my app to freeze at startup:
private Socket socket;
private BufferedReader input;
public boolean isConnected;
#Override
public void onCreate()
{
try
{
socket = new Socket ("server.ip.add.ress", 23456);
input = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (socket.getInputStream());
handshake();
isConnected = true;
}
catch // Handle IOException and UnknownHostException
}
// custom runnable to read availabe input from the server
private class MyRunnable implements Runnable
{
private volativle String value;
public String getValue()
{
return value;
}
#Override
public void run()
{
int count;
char[] buffer = new char[10]; // expected message 'username: '
try
{
count = input.read (buffer, 0, 10);
if (count > 0) value = new String (buffer);
}
catch // IOException
}
}
// when connection is established with server expect 'username: ' from
// the server and send the user name back to it
public void handshake()
{
MyRunnable runnable = new MyRunnable();
try
{
Thread thread = new Thread (runnable);
thread.start();
thread.join();
String greeting = runnable.getValue();
if (greeting.equals ("username: ")) // Send username back
}
catch // InterruptedException
}
why is it hanging? and how can i read a non terminated line?
Edit:
To clarify: The server sends the greeting message username: immediately after the connection is established with a client, the client wait for the greeting and send back it's username when received (that's what handshake() does), if no handshake the client disconnects otherwise it start listening for incoming messages. Because i need to know if handshake is complete before starting the listener i had to use Thread.join().
The problem: Thanks for the comments and answers below, it turned out that BufferedReader.read() blocks the thread and waits until something is sent from the server and if nothing is being sent it causes the app to hang, Therefor there's no way to find out if the line has ended.
The solution: In my specific situation i just wanted to know if a specific message is sent "username: " so i used read (buffer, 0, 10) to read exactly 10 characters (the length of "username: "), and because it blocks if nothing is sent i used Thread.join (1000) which waits only one second and then if nothing received i disconnect the client.
Why is it hanging?
This is what it is suppose to be. It will block the thread if no data is available to read. This is also why you want to put it in a background thread.
Can it not just return if nothing is available?
What you are looking for is ready(), which will tell you whether there is available data or not.
Indicates whether this reader is ready to be read without blocking.
Returns
true if this reader will not block when read is called, false if unknown or blocking will occur.
But you should be very careful when using this function. Because networking is a lot about timing. The fact that you don't have any data to read at this second doesn't necessary mean that it won't be any data in the next second.
So a better design of the server should be more or less as the following:
If the username is found, return the username
If the username is not found, return an error message to let the client side know that the username is not found
There's no need for the thread. Your goal is to wait until you've read what you've been waiting for. Why not just let read() perform the wait for you?
What you're struggling with is the classic problem of TCP communication: "when do I know that I've got everything the server sent?"
In your case, you're expecting to read bytes until the collection of bytes ends with "username: ". So, change your algorithm to perform 1 byte reads (filling a buffer as you go) until that buffer ends with "username: ".
You can make a more complicated algorithm -- which would be more efficient -- that would attempt to read multiple bytes at a time and append them to a buffer -- performing your check each time. But either strategy is logically equivalent.
I also recommend just using the InputStreamReader. It has various read() methods. I am a bit suspicious about the BufferedInputReader, especially when dealing with data that isn't newline terminated. I'm probably just paranoid. I've just never used it when writing TCP client/server programs, so I'm not sure.
When another application is sending a file to my app, I get a Uri via the intent.getExtras().get(EXTRA_STREAM) property. I can then get the bytes of the file using an inputstream : new BufferedInputStream(activity.getContentResolver().openInputStream(uri));
Everything's OK and working so far. Now I'd like to show some kind of progress to my user, but I'm not sure of how to get the total number of bytes of the file without reading the stream completely beforehand (which would defeat the whole purpose of the progress bar) ...
I tried ParcelFileDescriptor fileDesc = activity.getContentResolver().openFileDescriptor(uri, "r"); but this only works with uris of type file://....
For example If I receive a file from Skydrive I get a content://.. Uri, as in : content://com.microsoft.skydrive.content.external/external_property/10C32CC94ECB90C4!155/Sunset.480p.mp4
On such Uri I get (unsurprisingly) a "FileNotFoundException : Not a whole file" exception.
Any sure fire way to get the total size of the stream of data I will get ?
Even though InputStream.available() is (almost) never a recommended way of getting file size, it might be a viable solution in your case.
The content is already available locally. A server is not involved. So, the following should return the exact file size:
try {
InputStream inputStream = getContentResolver().openInputStream(uri);
Log.i("TEST", "File Size: " + inputStream.available());
} catch (FileNotFoundException fnfe) {
fnfe.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
I tested this with SkyDrive and Dropbox. The file sizes returned were correct.
There is no general solution for getting the size of a stream, other than reading the entire stream. This is easily proven: One could create a web server that, for some URL, generates a random stream of text that is terminated at a random time. (In fact, I'm sure such URLs exist, whether by design or not :-) In such a case, the size of the stream isn't known until the last byte has been generated, never mind received.
So, the stream size, if it is sent by the server at all, has to be sent in an application-specific manner.
I've never worked with SkyDrive, but a google search for its API turned up this link, which has the following example for Android Java apps:
public void readFile() {
String fileId = "file.a6b2a7e8f2515e5e.A6B2A7E8F2515E5E!141";
client.getAsync(fileId, new LiveOperationListener() {
public void onError(LiveOperationException exception, LiveOperation operation) {
resultTextView.setText("Error reading file: " + exception.getMessage());
}
public void onComplete(LiveOperation operation) {
JSONObject result = operation.getResult();
String text = "File info:" +
"\nID = " + result.optString("id") +
"\nName = " + result.optString("name");
resultTextView.setText(text);
}
});
}
Based on other examples on that page, I would guess that something like result.optString("size") (or maybe result.optInt("size") ?) would give you the size of the file.
I am making a download service of sorts, and it has the ability to resume a previous partial download. I am currently using the skip method like this
long skipped = 0;
while (skipped < track.getCacheFile().length()){
skipped += is.skip(track.getCacheFile().length()-skipped);
}
I just did a test and it took about 57 seconds seconds to skip 45 mb in an inputstream. I am curious how certain native code does this, for instance, the mediaplayer can seek to any part of a remote stream instantaneously. I realize that I do not have access to the same libraries, but can I achieve something similar.
btw, that test was on wifi. It is obviously much slower on normal data networks.
Update: very simple (thanks to below)
if (track.getCacheFile().length() > 0){
request.setHeader("Range","bytes="+track.getCacheFile().length()+"-");
}
If you are using http as a protocol to initiate your inputstream, you may try the RANGE header.
Take a look here :
http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/244.aspx
The problem with the skip method is that you have to read the data even if you skip them so you need to receive them. The best solution is probably to request the server only the part you want.
You can do it like this:
private InputStream getRemote(String url, long offset) {
try {
URLConnection cn = new URL( url ).openConnection();
cn.setRequestProperty ("Range", "bytes="+offset+"-");
cn.connect();
length = cn.getContentLength();
return cn.getInputStream();
} catch (MalformedURLException e ) { e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }
return null;
}
Then when you need to skip, you actually do a reconnect via HTTP to the new offset. Works quick and reliable, much better than using the inputstream's skip.