socket send() exits app unexceptively

**Kleid-0** · 07-19-2005

Hello everyone, I'm messing with a tiny webserver. A problem arises when I access this webserver with Firefox. When the webserver is done sending all of the data to Firefox, the last send(), at which should release -1 if an error occured:
http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man3/send.3.html
Doesn't, and instead it closes my application :(

The webserver does not close, everything goes OK, when I access the webserver with Konqueror or Epiphany web browsers. For some reason Firefox likes to kill the webserver with the send() function!

Here's a code snip:

Code:

puts( "*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!" );
assert((z=send(cs,b,strlen(b),0))!=-1);
puts( "*** PHEW!!" );
printf("Sent %d bytes\n",z);

Here's the overall output:

Code:

HTTP server running, please visit http://localhost:60001
Press a key to exit...
Foreign User: 127.0.0.1
Received:
/*****************************************************
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:60001
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/10134297 Firefox/1.0.4
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

\*****************************************************
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 17 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 25 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 2 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 59 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 67 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 28 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 22 bytes
Foreign User: 127.0.0.1
Received:
/*****************************************************
GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:60001
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/10134297 Firefox/1.0.4
Accept: image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

\*****************************************************
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 17 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 25 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 2 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 59 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!
*** PHEW!!
Sent 67 bytes
*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!

Notice the end where the webserver screams: "WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!", well, they didn't make it :(....*cries*....

Here's the updated webserver code.
http://killall.no-ip.org/Programming...ocktail_sauce/

Does anybody have any hints of why send() kills the webserver unexpectively at the very end of sending data to Firefox ? :(

PS: Tell me if I should post all of the code onto the forum in text.

**Salem** · 07-19-2005

> assert((z=send(cs,b,strlen(b),0))!=-1);
NEVER put code inside assert statements - you turn off debug, and that's it - bye bye code.

When asserts are active, you get exactly that - the program exits - no questions asked. When you run the code in the debugger, then the assert is trapped and it allows you to look around to see what went wrong.

Besides, your code needs to cope with a return of -1 as well, you can't just dismiss it as being erroneous.

Asserts are for checking for programming errors, not allowable status returns from functions.
Eg.

Code:

int squareroot ( int x ) {
  assert ( x >= 0 );  // a pre-condition
  // some code
  assert( result * result == x );  // a post-condition
  return result;
}

**valenok** · 07-19-2005

if the connection is terminated, and send() is called, program gets SIGPIPE.
by default, that signal terminates the program. Either handle that signal, or ignore it.

**Kleid-0** · 07-19-2005

Yeah I don't think there's one instance in my code that was using assert appropriately lol.

http://killall.no-ip.org/Programming...cktail_sauce.c
----
[edit]
aaahh valenok, you have a sharp eye on your docs :], thank you,

Code:

signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);

does the trick :]

...VERY excellent, I just tried it! Here's the new snippet:

Code:

puts( "*** WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!!" );
if((z=send(cs,b,strlen(b),0))==-1){
   puts("Error sending data to foreign user!");
   if(errno=EPIPE)
   {
      puts("Recovering from the foreign socket termination...");
      break;
   }
   close(cs);
   close(ls);
   return 1;
}
puts( "*** PHEW!!" );
printf("Sent %d bytes\n",z);

**Hammer** · 07-19-2005

>>if(errno=EPIPE)
Oops, don't you need 2 equals signs in there

**Kleid-0** · 07-19-2005

Oh jeez lol

**Kleid-0** · 07-24-2005

Alright five days later I've come up with a better solution. Instead of:

Code:

signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);
if((z=send(cs,b,strlen(b),0))==-1){
  puts("Error sending data to foreign user!");
  if(errno==EPIPE)
  {
    puts("Recovering from the foreign socket termination...");
    break;
  }
  close(cs);
  close(ls);
  return 1;
}

You could just go like this:

Code:

/* Notice there is no need to ignore the signal pipe because of the send() flag MSG_NOSIGNAL */
if((z=send(cs,b,strlen(b),MSG_NOSIGNAL))==-1){
  puts("Error sending data to foreign user!");
  if(errno==EPIPE)
  {
    puts("Recovering from the foreign socket termination...");
    break;
  }
  close(cs);
  close(ls);
  return 1;
}

I believe that's a cleaner way to prevent your application from being destroyed by the SIG_PIPE signal.

**valenok** · 07-25-2005

I suggest not using linuxisms. MSG_NOSIGNAL is one of them.
The more portable code is, the better.

**Kleid-0** · 07-25-2005

How can you tell if this stuff is portable or not? How can you tell they're flags just for linux and not for a different OS too?

**valenok** · 07-25-2005

by reading standards, and by actually building programs on different platforms.
you may go to http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi
there are man pages for many OSes. in your case, check every function first before use.
Read SUS, POSIX - you can find specs in Internet.
Get C ISO standard. Try to use standard functions and parameters only.
Get Richard Stevens' books, they help greatly writing good portable code for UNIX systems.
Build your programs on BSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, and you get a good coverage.
Use free compile farms.

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