Thread: could not accept socket

I'm having this intermittent problem with a server program I wrote, and every couple of weeks, it terminates because it fails in attempting to accept a socket. I am using a C++ wrapper class for the traditional unix socket api, and my machines which run the server are behind a barracuda load balancer. I suspect the load balancer of causing this problem, but have no proof of it. it is also possible that there is some sort of attack being perpetrated on my server, but there is no evidence of this. Is there any bug in the linux 2.6.x kernel that causes a system to run out of sockets over time? generally, my server will successfully accept thousands of connections before displaying this problem, so I doubt it's an issue with my code.

Hardware:
2x Dell PowerEdge 6850/4x dual core 2.66GHz CPU/16GB RAM

OS:
OpenSUSE 10.3 release/Kernel 2.6.22.5-31

Other software:
MySQL 5.0.45-22

Originally Posted by vart

Are you sure that your program closes sockets and frees other resourses as it should?
there is 65000 ports available so maybe you accept new connections till you use all the ports not freeing any?

I hear you knockin, but the server only listens on one port. is it possible that each connection it hands off to a child process uses another port? in any case, I'm 90% certain that I'm closing and freeing the sockets, but I'll definitely go through my code some more...