Socket being garbage collected too early

[Scott Robinson]

On 16 Dec 2004 20:38:29 -0500, David Bolen <db3l at fitlinxx.com> wrote:

>Scott Robinson <dscottr at bellatlantic.net> writes:
>
>> I have been having trouble with the garbage collector and sockets.
>
>Are you actually getting errors or is this just theoretical?
>
>> Unfortunately, google keeps telling me that the problem is the garbage
>> collector ignoring dead (closed?) sockets instead of removing live
>> ones.  My problem is
>> 
>> 
>> 	x.sock=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM)
>> 	do_stuff(x.sock)
>> 
>> 
>> def do_stuff(sock):
>> 	sock_list.append(sock)
>> 
>> once do_stuff finishes, x.sock disappears, and I can only believe it
>> is being garbage collected.
>
>Can you clarify this?  What do you mean by "x.sock" disappears?  Are
>you getting a NameError later when trying to use "x.sock"?  
>
>x.sock is just a name binding, so it is not really involved in garbage
>collection (GC applies to the objects to which names are bound). 
>
>In this case, you need to include much more in the way of code (a
>fully running, but smallest possible, snippet of code would be best),
>since the above can be interpreted many ways.  At the least, it's very
>important to include information about the namespace within which
>those two code snippets run if anyone is likely to be able to give you
>a good answer.  Also, being very precise about the error condition you
>are experiencing (including actual error messages, tracebacks, etc...)
>is crucial.
>
>Is 'x' referencing a local or global object, and does that socket code
>occur within a method, a function, or what?  Also, in do_stuff, where
>is sock_list defined?  Is it local, global?
>
>If, as written, sock_list is a local name to do_stuff, then that
>binding is going to disappear when do_stuff completes, thus, the list
>to which it is bound will be destroyed, including all references to
>objects that the list may contain.  So at that point, when you return
>from do_stuff, the only reference to the socket object will be in
>x.sock.  But if 'x' is also local to the function/method where the
>call to do_stuff is, the name binding will be removed when the
>function/method returns, at which point there will be no references to
>the socket object, and yes, it will be destroyed.
>
>But if sock_list is global, and continues to exist when do_stuff
>completes, then the reference it contains to the socket will keep the
>socket object alive even if you remove the x.sock binding.
>
>-- David
(so much for Python being executable psuedocode).

It looks like I was completely wrong.  The problem I ran into was not
checking into baseHTTPserver and looking for self.close_connection=1.

I am pretty sure this happened to me before, and I rewrote the code to
avoid sockets being closed after being referenced to a live object,
but I can't reproduce it.

Anyway, here is my debugged test rig.  It works.  Ignore it.


Scott
[test program follows]
import socket, thread, time

class sock_holder:
    pass

HOST = '127.0.0.1'
PORT = 2004

def echo_server(port):
    print "started at",port
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    s.bind((HOST, port))
    s.listen(1)
    conn, addr = s.accept()
    print 'Connected by', addr
    while 1:
        data = conn.recv(1024)
        if not data: break
        conn.send(data)
    conn.close()

def wait_and_speak(a):
    time.sleep(5)
    try:
        a.sock.send("this is message 2")
    except:
        print "error on message 2"
    try:
        data = a.sock.recv(1024)
        print data
    except:
        print "error recieving message 2"
    a.sock.close()

def other_thread(a):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    thread.start_new(echo_server,(PORT,))
    time.sleep(1)
    s.connect((HOST,PORT ))
    s.send('Hello, port 1')
    data = s.recv(1024)
    print data
    a.sock=s
    
    thread.start_new(wait_and_speak,(a,))

a=sock_holder()
thread.start_new(other_thread,(a,))
time.sleep(10)