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* [PATCH v2] close.2: Suggest shutdown(2) when closing socket from another thread
@ 2023-09-14  7:42 Tomáš Golembiovský
  2023-09-14  9:38 ` Alejandro Colomar
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Tomáš Golembiovský @ 2023-09-14  7:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Alejandro Colomar; +Cc: linux-man, Tomáš Golembiovský

This is another take on the ancient saga of closing sockets from one
thread while another thread is blocked on recv(2). It all started with
[1,2] and continued by [3]. It was established that this is expected and
long term behavior or Linux and the issue was closed by Michael Kerrisk
by commit c2f15a1349a7271f6c1d81361ec8b256266e1c09.

This is all fine and the patch covered the issue in general terms.
However, it does not mention the specific case of sockets and shutdown,
where the issue can be (at least for the read case) mitigated by proper
shutdown. While one may argue that such information may be implied by
other man pages (perhaps return value of recv(2)) and thus is redundant,
it seems only fair to mention shutdown(2) here as it is only rarely
noted in Linux documentation that properly shutting down both side of
the socket is a good programming practice when dealing with sockets.

As a test program I am attaching the program originally written by Lukas
Czerner. Only with small fixes here and there.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/1314620800-15587-1-git-send-email-lczerner@redhat.com/
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=650985
[3] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53781

```c
/**
 * Copyright Red Hat
 * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
 */

void *close_socket(void *arg) {
        int sockfd = *(int *)arg;

        sleep(3);
        printf("Thread: closing socket %d\n", sockfd);
//      shutdown(sockfd, SHUT_RDWR);
        close(sockfd);
        return NULL;
}

int client(void) {
        int sockfd;
        int len;
        struct sockaddr_un address;
        int ret;
        char *buffer=malloc(BUFSIZE);
        pthread_t thread;

        sockfd = socket(AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

        address.sun_family = AF_UNIX;
        strcpy(address.sun_path, "server_socket");
        len = sizeof(address);

        ret = connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, len);
        if (ret == -1) {
                perror("connect");
                return 1;
        }
        printf("client connected\n");

        ret = pthread_create(&thread, NULL, close_socket, (void *)&sockfd);
        if (ret != 0) {
                perror("Creating thread failed");
                return 1;
        }

        while (1) {
                ret = recv(sockfd,buffer,BUFSIZE,0);
                if (ret < 0) {
                        perror("recv");
                        return 1;
                }
                printf("Data received: %s\n", buffer);
                sleep(1);
        }

        close(sockfd);
        return 0;
}

int server(void) {
        char *message="This is the message I am sending to you";
        struct sockaddr_un server_addr, client_addr;
        int server_sockfd, client_sockfd;
        socklen_t server_len, client_len;
        int ret;

        unlink("server_socket");
        server_sockfd = socket(AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

        server_addr.sun_family = AF_UNIX;
        strcpy(server_addr.sun_path, "server_socket");
        server_len = sizeof(server_addr);
        bind(server_sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&server_addr, server_len);

        listen(server_sockfd, 5);

        client_len = sizeof(client_addr);
        client_sockfd = accept(server_sockfd,
                (struct sockaddr *)&client_addr, &client_len);

        printf("Server: sending data...\n");
        ret = send(client_sockfd ,message,strlen(message),0);
        if (ret < 0) {
                perror("send");
                return 1;
        }

        /* simulate running server by not closing the client_socket socket */
        return 0;
}

int main() {
        pid_t pid;

        pid = fork();
        if (pid < 0) {
                perror("fork failed");
                exit(1);
        }
        if (pid > 0) {
                printf(" - starting server\n");
                server();
                printf(" - exiting server\n");
                wait(NULL);
        } else {
                sleep(1);
                printf(" - starting client\n");
                client();
                printf(" - exiting client\n");
        }
}
```

Signed-off-by: Tomáš Golembiovský <tgolembi@redhat.com>
---

v2: updated test file header

 man2/close.2 | 5 +++++
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)

diff --git a/man2/close.2 b/man2/close.2
index 68211bc58..08c6a0839 100644
--- a/man2/close.2
+++ b/man2/close.2
@@ -145,6 +145,11 @@ Thus, the blocking system call in the first thread may successfully
 complete after the
 .BR close ()
 in the second thread.
+.PP
+When dealing with sockets,
+blocking forever in another thread may be prevented by using
+.BR shutdown (2)
+to shut down both parts of the connection before closing the socket.
 .\"
 .SS Dealing with error returns from close()
 A careful programmer will check the return value of
-- 
2.42.0


^ permalink raw reply related	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2023-09-14  9:49 UTC | newest]

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2023-09-14  7:42 [PATCH v2] close.2: Suggest shutdown(2) when closing socket from another thread Tomáš Golembiovský
2023-09-14  9:38 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-09-14  9:49   ` Alejandro Colomar

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