Thread: TCP Sockets: multiple clients - one server

Hi all,

I am trying to create an application that uses TCP sockets under Unix, where multiple clients connect to one server. Each message sent by one client is forwarded to all other clients. I am using on the server side an array of int's declared at the beginning of the application, that will contain the socket descriptor returned by the "accept" function for each client that connects. After this, I am fork-ing a new child that will handle that client. All child processes need to access the array of int's in order to send to everyone the client messages.

My problem is that for the first client (child process), the array of int's has only one element, namely its own socket (file) descriptor, for the second client, the array of int's has two elements, like it is supposed to have, but the first child process created for the first client still has only one element, instead of two. I have no idea why and how to change the code so that the first client will also have 2 elements when the second client connects to the server. I have tried declaring the array as static, using pointers, etc, but nothing works.

Server code snippet:

Code:

...
int clients[5], i = 0;
//int * clients = (int *)calloc(5, sizeof(int));
int sd;
... 
socket(...);
bind(...);
listen(...);
...
while (1) {
   sd = accept(...);
   clients[i] = sd;
   i++;
   ...
   if (fork() == 0) {
      ...
      for(i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
         send(clients(i), ...);
      }
      ...
   }
   ...
}

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Hmm good question. I'll have a little play with fork(), seems like it should work. If you're not bothered about which method to use, you should use select() to do this, the link even provides an example of what you're trying to accomplish.

I am currently restructuring the server side so that it uses select() instead of fork()-ing processes. The problem is that the child processes copy everything from parent, so global variables are not shared, but copied instead. I tried with static variable but no luck there either.

There must be some way. I haven't managed to do it, the attached code shows my attempt. Useless. Hopefully, someone with more experience will enlighten us.

The approach is just not right. As you see, you can't just fork() when each new client connection comes in, because the new process is not aware of connections that will be made later on. You can't do this with separate processes like this.

You need to either use threads, or a multiple-resource wait method like select().