6. Advanced Socket Programming
6.1. How would I put my socket in non-blocking mode?
From Andrew Gierth (andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk):
Technically, fcntl(soc, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK) is incorrect since it
clobbers all other file flags. Generally one gets away with it since
the other flags (O_APPEND for example) don't really apply much to
sockets. In a similarly rough vein, you would use fcntl(soc, F_SETFL,
0) to go back to blocking mode.
To do it right, use F_GETFL to get the current flags, set or clear the
O_NONBLOCK flag, then use F_SETFL to set the flags.
And yes, the flag can be changed either way at will.
6.2. How can I put a timeout on connect()?
Andrew Gierth (andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk) has outlined the
following procedure for using select() with connect(), which will
allow you to put a timeout on the connect() call:
First, create the socket and put it into non-blocking mode, then call
connect(). There are three possibilities:
o connect succeeds: the connection has been successfully made (this
usually only happens when connecting to the same machine)
o connect fails: obvious
o connect returns -1/EINPROGRESS. The connection attempt has begun,
but not yet completed.
If the connection succeeds:
o the socket will select() as writable (and will also select as
readable if data arrives)
If the connection fails:
o the socket will select as readable *and* writable, but either a
read or write will return the error code from the connection
attempt. Also, you can use getsockopt(SO_ERROR) to get the error
status - but be careful; some systems return the error code in the
result parameter of getsockopt(), but others (incorrectly) cause
the getsockopt call itself to fail with the stored value as the
error.
Sample code that illustrates this can be found in the socket-faq
examples, in the file connect.c.
7. Sample Source Code
The sample source code is no longer included in the faq. To get it,
please download it from one of the unix-socket-faq www pages:
http://www.ibrado.com/sock-faq
http://kipper.york.ac.uk/~vic/sock-faq
http://www.ntua.gr/sock-faq
If you don't have web access, you can ftp it with ftpmail by following
the following instructions. Please do not use the ftp server if you
have access to the web, since computain.com is connected only by a
28.8 modem, and you'd be amazed how much traffic this faq generates.
To get the sample source by mail, send mail to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com,
with no subject line and a body like this:
reply <put your email address here>
connect ftp.computain.com
binary
uuencode
get pub/sockets/examples.tar.gz
quit
Save the reply as examples.uu, and type:
% uudecode examples.uu
% gunzip examples.tar.gz
% tar xf examples.tar
This will create a directory called socket-faq-examples which contains
the sample code from this faq, plus a sample client and server for
both tcp and udp.
Note that this package requires the gnu unzip program to be installed
on your system. It is very common, but if you don't have it you can
get the source for it from:
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/
If you don't have ftp access, you can obtain it in a way similar to
obtaining the sample source. I'll leave the exact changes to the body
of the message as an excersise for the reader.
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