recvfrom infinite receiving problem - c

I m writing a server using udp socket. After a client send first message to connect, i open new socket to communicate with this client on this socket (first sockets for listening) and create a thread for each client. But in thread, the while loop goes infinitely because recvfrom receive data everytime altough any client send data. What is the problem in my code?
The code sample below:
int main()
{
.....
// creating socket
if( (sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) ) == -1 )
{
perror("Socket cannot be created\n");
return FAILURE;
}
.....
for(; ;)
{
// TAKE CLIENTS INFORMATION
/**************************************/
recvfrom(sock, &client, sizeof(Client), MSG_WAITALL, (struct sockaddr *)&clientAddr, &size); //1
.......
if( (sock2 = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) ) == -1 )
{
perror("Socket cannot be created\n");
return FAILURE;
}
client.sock = sock2;
...
pthread_create(thid+num_client-1, NULL, messanger, (void*)(clients + num_client-1));
} // end of for loop
}// end of main
// thread function
void *messanger(void *argClient)
{
Client client = *(Client*)argClient;
...
while(strcmp(message.buffer, "exit") != 0)
{
recvfrom(client.sock, &message, sizeof(Message), MSG_WAITALL, (struct sockaddr *)&clientAddr, &size);
printf("%s\n", message.buffer);
}// this file loops infinetely altough client does not send data. Printf prints onln new line
}

Where do you bind() the second socket (or the first, for that matter)? Why aren't you checking recvfrom() for failure?
This isn't the way to write a UDP server, anyway. You use a single socket to recieve all packets. You then inspect the sender address, match it up with the right client and handle it as appropriate (for example, you could put it onto a work queue for a per-client thread, then wake that thread up using pthread_cond_signal()).

You're busy-waiting. Try using poll or select instead.

Related

How to handle TCP client disconnect in C

I am trying to write a basic TCP server that streams serial data to a client. The server would connect to a serial device, read data from said device, and then transmit it as a byte stream to the client. Writing the TCP server is no problem. The issue is that the server will crash when a client disconnects. In other languages, like Python, I can simply wrap the write() statement in a try-catch block. The program will try to write to the socket, but if the client has disconnected then an exception will be thrown. In another project, this code snippet worked for me:
try:
client_socket.send(bytes(buf, encoding='utf8'))
except Exception as e:
logger.info("Client disconnected: %s", client_id)
I can handle client disconnects in my C code, but only by first reading from the socket and checking if the read is equal to 0. If it is, then my client has disconnected and I can carry on as usual. The problem with this solution is that my client has to ping back to the server after every write, which is less than ideal.
Does anyone know how to gracefully handle TCP client disconnects in C? My example code is shown below. Thank you!
// Define a TCP socket
int sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
// Allow for the backlog of 100 connections to the socket
int backlog = 100;
// Supply a port to bind the TCP server to
short port = 9527;
// Set up server attributes
struct sockaddr_in servaddr;
servaddr.sin_family = AF_INET;
servaddr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
servaddr.sin_port = htons(port);
// Set the socket so that we can bind to the same port when we exit the program
int flag = 1;
if (setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, &flag, sizeof(flag)) == -1) {
perror("setsockopt fail");
}
// Bind the socket to the specified port
int res = bind(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&servaddr, sizeof(servaddr));
if (res < 0) {
perror("bind fail");
exit(1);
}
// Listen for incoming connections
if (listen(sockfd, backlog) == -1) {
perror("listen fail");
exit(1);
} else {
printf("Server listening on port\n", port);
}
for(;;) {
// Wait for incoming connection
struct sockaddr_in cliaddr;
socklen_t len = sizeof(cliaddr);
int connfd = accept(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&cliaddr, &len);
if (-1 == connfd) {
perror("Could not accept incoming client");
continue;
}
//Resolving Client Address
char buff[INET_ADDRSTRLEN + 1] = {0};
inet_ntop(AF_INET, &cliaddr.sin_addr, buff, INET_ADDRSTRLEN);
uint16_t cli_port = ntohs(cliaddr.sin_port);
printf("connection from %s, port %d\n", buff, cli_port);
for(;;) {
// Read from serial device into variable here, then send
if(send(connfd, "Data...Data...Data\n", 19, 0) < 0) {
printf("Client disconnected...\n");
break;
}
}
}
Looks like a duplicate of this, this and this.
Long story short you can't detect the disconnection until you perform some write (or read) on that connection. More exactly, even if it seems there is no error returned by send, this is not a guarantee that this operation was really sent and received by the client. The reason is that the socket operations are buffered and the payload of send is just queued so that the kernel will dispatch it later on.
Depending on the context, the requirements and the assumptions you can do something more.
For example, if you are under the hypothesys that you will send periodic message at constant frequency, you can use select and a timeout approach to detect an anomaly.
In other words if you have not received anything in the last 3 minutes you assume that there is an issue.
As you can easily found, this and this are a good read on the topic.
Look at that for a far more detailed explanation and other ideas.
What you call the ping (intended as a message that is sent for every received packet) is more similar to what is usually known as an ACK.
You only need something like that (ACK/NACK) if you also want to be sure that the client received and processed that message.
Thanks to #emmanuaf, this is the solution that fits my project criteria. The thing that I was missing was the MSG_NOSIGNAL flag, referenced here.
I use Mashpoe's C Vector Library to create a new vector, which will hold all of my incoming client connections.
int* client_array = vector_create();
I then spawn a pthread that continually reads from a serial device, stores that data in a variable, and then sends it to each client in the client list
void* serve_clients(int *vargp) {
for(;;) {
// Perform a microsleep
sleep(0.1);
// Read from the Serial device
// Get the size of the client array vector
int client_vector_size = vector_size(vargp);
for(int i = 0 ; i < client_vector_size ; i++) {
// Make a reference to the socket
int* conn_fd = &vargp[i];
/*
In order to properly handle client disconnects, we supply a MSG_NOSIGNAL
flag to the send() call. That way, if the client disconnects, we will
be able to detect this, and properly remove them from the client list.
Referenced from: https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html//index.html#sendman
*/
if (send(*conn_fd, "Reply from server\n", 18, MSG_NOSIGNAL) < 0) {
printf("Client disconnected...\n");
// Close the client connection
close(*conn_fd);
// Remove client socket from the vector
vector_remove(vargp, i);
// Decrement index and client_server_size by 1
i--;
client_vector_size--;
}
}
}
}
To spawn the pthread:
// Spawn the thread that serves clients
pthread_t serving_thread;
pthread_create(&serving_thread, NULL, serve_clients, client_array);
When a new connection comes in, I simply add the new connection to the client vector
while(1) {
// Wait for incoming connection
struct sockaddr_in cliaddr;
socklen_t len = sizeof(cliaddr);
int connfd = accept(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&cliaddr, &len);
if (-1 == connfd) {
perror("Could not accept incoming client");
continue;
}
//Resolving Client Address
char buff[INET_ADDRSTRLEN + 1] = {0};
inet_ntop(AF_INET, &cliaddr.sin_addr, buff, INET_ADDRSTRLEN);
uint16_t cli_port = ntohs(cliaddr.sin_port);
printf("connection from %s:%d -- Connfd: %d\n", buff, cli_port, connfd);
// Add client to vector list
vector_add(&client_array, connfd);
}
In the end, we have a TCP server that can multiplex data to many clients, and handle when those clients disconnect.

local linux socket receives old data

I just wrote a program that uses local socket to communicate between two processes
if client send one message to server, and then close the connection, server would only receive one message
clent:
send(srvfd,data,size,0)
close(srvfd)
server:
n=recv(fd,buf,size,0)
however, if client send one message, and server also send one message (any string) back to client, then client close the connection, server would receive the older message that client sends
client:
send(srvfd,data,size,0)
n=recv(srvfd,buf,size,0)
close(srvfd)
server:
n=recv(fd,buf,size,0)
send(fd,"response",8,0)
n=recv(fd,buf,size,0) //receive the first message again
here is my initialize code:
struct sockaddr_un srvAddr;
int listenFd = socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if (listenFd < 0) {
perror("cannot create communication socket");
throw runtime_error("cannot create communication socket");
}
srvAddr.sun_family = AF_UNIX;
strncpy(srvAddr.sun_path, sockFile.c_str(), sockFile.size());
unlink(sockFile.c_str());
int ret = bind(listenFd, (struct sockaddr*) &srvAddr, sizeof(srvAddr));
if (ret == -1) {
perror("cannot bind server socket");
close(listenFd);
unlink(sockFile.c_str());
throw runtime_error("cannot bind server socket");
}
ret = listen(listenFd, BACKLOG);
if (ret < 0) {
perror("cannot listen the client connect request");
close(listenFd);
unlink(sockFile.c_str());
throw runtime_error("cannot listen the client connect request");
}
send(fd,"response",8,0)
n=recv(fd,buf,size,0) //receive the first message again
No you didn't. What you got got was n == 0, meaning end of stream. It also means that zero bytes were transferred into the buffer, so none of what's now in the buffer is now meaningful.
Don't ignore return codes.

segmentation fault with accept() on linux

I have a problem with a client/server programm on linux.
I wrote a server programm wich is sending data cyclic to one conneted client.
Now I want to detect, if the client close the connection to the server. When the connection is closed from the client, i want to wait with accept(...) for an new connection.
Here the critical parts of my code:
error = send(client_sock, Zeichen, 1, MSG_NOSIGNAL);
if(error < 0)
{
connected = 0;
printf("Error, write on TCP Socket failed!!! Reconnecting... \r\n");
close(serverSocket);
initServer();
}
int initServer(void)
{
int *new_sock;
socklen_t size;
struct sockaddr_in server, client;
serverSocket = socket(AF_INET , SOCK_STREAM , 0); //Create socket
if (serverSocket == -1)
{
printf("Could not create socket \r\n");
return 0;
}else
{
printf("Socket created \r\n");
}
server.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(IPAdresse);
server.sin_family = AF_INET;
server.sin_port = htons(TCPPort);
if(bind(serverSocket,(struct sockaddr *)&server , sizeof(server)) < 0)
{
printf("bind failed. Error \r\n");
return 0;
}else
{
printf("bind done \r\n");
}
listen(serverSocket, 1);
printf("Waiting for incoming connections... \r\n");
size = sizeof(sockaddr_in);
printf("size of sockaddr_in: %i \r\n", size);
client_sock = accept(serverSocket, (struct sockaddr *)&client, &size);
if (client_sock < 0)
{
printf("accept failed \r\n");
return 0;
}else
{
connected = 1;
return 1;
}
}
The first time it works fine, I can connect and can send data over the socket. When the client close the connection the error is detected, I close the socket an start the server again to wait for a new connection. But than I get a segmentation fault when I do the accept(..) for the second time!!!
Can someone help me please!!! Thanks a lot!
It's not clear what you're doing when the client connection closes. I see no loop in your code, and yet you're suggesting that accept() is called more than once.
Without seeing the rest or the code, I can only speculate that:
you're repeatedly calling initServer(), hence attempting to recreate the same server socket over and over (which, of course, would be bad),
or
you're calling accept() again somewhere else in your code, most likely with corrupt arguments.
At the very least, what your server-side code should do is initialize the server socket once, then loop around accept(), like so:
call socket() once
call bind() once
call listen() once
then in a loop:
call accept(), this call will block until a client connects, and then return a connected socket,
do whatever you need to do with that (connected client) socket
resume with the loop

Open and close socket when not using for communication, only using select() in language C

I'm writing a peer 2 peer chat application using TCP. This application includes client and server part in one file. I'm using select() without using fork(), pthread to handle connections. This is my mechanism of application, I run the application on a same host by running application on different terminals:
Initialize the first node, let say P1, as ./p2p portToListen.
This node will open a socket on portToListen, let say ServerSock1, to listen connections from other peers.
And then it goes to a while loop with a select() function to wait for events.
Initialize the second node, let say P2, as ./p2p portToListen portToConnectTo (I don't specify IP address here since I'm running on a local machine).
This also opens a new socket, let say ServerSock2, on "portToListen" as the first one, opens a new socket, let say ClientSock2 to connect to the first one. And then goes into the while loop.
When P2 connects to P1, at P1, it also accepts a new connection with a socket, ClientSock1.
After some phases for setting network information and exchanging configuration of the network(P1 sends information of current group to P2 and waits for ACK from P2), they are able to send chatting messages.
My question is, in this case, do I need to close the socket every time a peer sends/receives configuration information(not chatting message). For example, after P1 sends information of current group, do I need to close both ServerSock1 and ClientSock1, and after P2 sends ACK, do I need to close both ServerSock2 and ClientSock2? I think, ServerSock1,2 should always be opened? And only be closed outside of while loop?
If I do that, select() will not work since there is no socket to monitor events. When two peers would like to send chatting message, they need to open sockets again for Server side and Client side, send information to set up a new connection, by calling (socket(), bind(), listener(), accept(), connect()), send some chatting messages and close() sockets again.
Furthermore, if I want to send a broadcasting messages to other peers in a same group, I need to open sockets of peers again, send a chatting message and close() every socket?
In general, since I'm using only select(), what is a correct way to close() and open sockets? If it's possible, can you give me a general scenario for this? I really appreciate for your any comments. Thanks very much. Below is my general code:
int main(void)
{
int sock;
fd_set socks;
fd_set readsocks;
int maxsock;
int reuseaddr = 1; /* True */
struct addrinfo hints, *res;
/* Get the address info */
memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints);
hints.ai_family = AF_INET;
hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
if (getaddrinfo(NULL, PORT, &hints, &res) != 0) {
perror("getaddrinfo");
return 1;
}
/* Create the socket */
sock = socket(res->ai_family, res->ai_socktype, res->ai_protocol);
if (sock == -1) {
perror("socket");
return 1;
}
/* Enable the socket to reuse the address */
if (setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, &reuseaddr, sizeof(int)) == -1) {
perror("setsockopt");
return 1;
}
/* Bind to the address */
if (bind(sock, res->ai_addr, res->ai_addrlen) == -1) {
perror("bind");
return 1;
}
freeaddrinfo(res);
/* Listen */
if (listen(sock, BACKLOG) == -1) {
perror("listen");
return 1;
}
/* Set up the fd_set */
FD_ZERO(&socks);
FD_SET(sock, &socks);
FD_SET(0, &socks);
maxsock = sock;
if (argc > 2)
{
clientSock2 = ConnectToServer(IPaddres, portToConnect);
FD_SET(clientSock2, &socks);
}
/* Main loop */
while (1) {
unsigned int s;
readsocks = socks;
if (select(maxsock + 1, &readsocks, NULL, NULL, NULL) == -1) {
perror("select");
return 1;
}
for (s = 0; s <= maxsock; s++) {
if (FD_ISSET(s, &readsocks)) {
printf("socket %d was ready\n", s);
if (s == sock) {
/* New connection */
int clientSock1;
struct sockaddr_in their_addr;
size_t size = sizeof(struct sockaddr_in);
clientSock1 = accept(sock, (struct sockaddr*)&their_addr, &size);
if (newsock == -1) {
perror("accept");
}
else {
printf("Got a connection from %s on port %d\n",
inet_ntoa(their_addr.sin_addr), htons(their_addr.sin_port));
FD_SET(clientSock1, &socks);
if (clientSock1 > maxsock) {
maxsock = clientSock1;
}
}
}
else {
/* Handle send, recv() information of network */
handle(s, &socks);
}
}
}
if (FD_ISSET(0, &readset) { // Handle input
// Sending chatting message
}
}
close(sock);
return 0;
}
You should reuse the same connection. You may need to adjust your protocol so you know exactly where a request and a response finish and a new one starts.
No, you don't have to close() anything unless you want to terminate a connection or stop listening for new ones.
The listen() socket will continue to listen for new connection attempts even after you accept() one, just keep checking for new connections with select() and accept() them aswell, you don't have to recreate this socket.
An estabilished TCP session is a two-way stream of data where you can safely send() and recv() multiple times as long as you need to communicate with that peer. Reconnecting after each block of information is pointless.
Use select() in the accepted connections too to check if there is information ready to recv().
Note you have to rebuild the fd_set every time you call select() on it. The way your code it doing it is wrong.

How to push (i.e. flush) data sent to a TCP stream

RFC 793 says that TCP defines a "push" function that ensures that the receiver got the data:
Sometimes users need to be sure that all the data they have
submitted to the TCP has been transmitted. For this purpose a push
function is defined. To assure that data submitted to a TCP is
actually transmitted the sending user indicates that it should be
pushed through to the receiving user. A push causes the TCPs to
promptly forward and deliver data up to that point to the receiver.
However, I can't find a push system call. Using fsync on the file descriptor produces an invalid argument error.
I conducted an experiment with a simple server that accepts a connection from a client, waits, then sends 26 bytes to the client:
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define PORT 1234
int main(void)
{
int server_fd;
int client_fd;
if ((server_fd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0) {
perror("socket");
return 1;
}
{
struct sockaddr_in addr;
memset(&addr, 0, sizeof(addr));
addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
addr.sin_port = htons(PORT);
addr.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;
if (bind(server_fd, (struct sockaddr*)&addr, sizeof(addr)) != 0) {
perror("bind");
return 1;
}
}
if (listen(server_fd, 20) != 0) {
perror("listen");
return 1;
}
{
struct sockaddr_in addr;
socklen_t addrlen = sizeof(addr);
printf("Waiting for connection on port %d\n", PORT);
if ((client_fd = accept(server_fd, (struct sockaddr*)&addr, &addrlen)) < 0) {
perror("accept");
return 1;
}
printf("%s:%d connected\n",
inet_ntoa(addr.sin_addr),
ntohs(addr.sin_port));
}
printf("Giving client time to close connection.\n");
sleep(10);
{
ssize_t sent_length;
if ((sent_length =
send(client_fd, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", 26, 0)) < 0)
{
perror("send");
return 1;
}
printf("Sent %Zd bytes.\n", sent_length);
}
printf("Closing connection to client\n");
if (close(client_fd) != 0) {
perror("close(client_fd)");
return 1;
}
printf("Shutting down\n");
if (close(server_fd) != 0) {
perror("server: close(server_fd)");
return 1;
}
printf("Done!\n");
return 0;
}
I found that the send call immediately returns 26, even after I close the connection client-side or unplug the network cable. In the latter case, the data appears on the client when I plug the cable back in and wait a few seconds (long after the server has shut down).
How do I ensure that data sent with send is received and acknowledged?
There is no push, says the late W. Richard Stevens; the standard sockets API doesn't provide it, and is not required to do so by RFC 1122. You can set the TCP_NODELAY option, but that's only a partial solution.
If you want to be sure the other end got your data, then let it send an acknowledgment over the TCP channel.
try to add a shutdown call before the close of the socket;
shutdown(client_fd,SHUT_RDWR);
However the real solution is to get an acknowledgement back from the client that it has received the data -- I.e. you need to define a protocol -- the simplest of simple protocols is that the client is responsible for closing the socket when the data is received.
Well as per my limited knowledge, TCP will insure that the data is transferred to the other machine / socket.
But has the program at the other end read / accessed the data cannot be confirmed using standard socket API's. Your other end (client in this case) might be busy doing something else instead of waiting for data to show up.
I think that your requirement will be full filled if you implement some sort of handshaking between server / client to track what all has been received using some kind of acknowledgements.
The acknowledgement mechanism is important if your application depends on it.
You can force immediately sending of small packets by disabling Nagle's algorithm, but this does not guarantee that the client will receive it.
If you have to wait for the acknowledge you have to build this into the protocol and wait for the client to write something into the socket that signals the reception of message.
The only way to make sure your data is send over is to Receive an answer. After testing for many days this is the only way to make sure it is 'flushed' to the other side.
// Receive until the peer closes the connection to make sure all data has been send
do {
iResult = recv(ConnectSocket, recvbuf, recvbuflen, 0);
if (iResult > 0){
printf("Bytes received: %d\n", iResult);
}
else if (iResult == 0){
printf("Connection closed\n");
}
else{
printf("recv failed with error: %d\n", WSAGetLastError());
}
} while (iResult > 0);

Resources