how to recover when getprotobyname("tcp") fails?

When getprotobyname("tcp") returns NULL, how do you recover? I tried:

Code:

---

  while ( ((int)(ptrp = getprotobyname("tcp"))) == 0)  {
    fprintf(stderr, "cannot map \"tcp\" to protocol number\n");
    sleep(1);
  }

---

but it doesn't seem to get working again until the application trying to connect to this app disconnects.

Is there a good way to recover from this?

I'm not sure if that specific call has a non-blocking version, (it probably does, most of the networking ones do) but you might consider makeing a thread for it and setting it loose, and having the parent thread run a timeout for it.