How to reuse TCP listening socket immediately after it was connected at least once?

[Igor Katson]

Roy Smith wrote:
> In article <gvb8fn$7gm$1 at lust.ihug.co.nz>,
>  Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
>
>   
>> In message <mailman.651.1243154739.8015.python-list at python.org>, Igor Katson 
>> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> I have written a socket server and some arbitrary clients. When I
>>> shutdown the server, and do socket.close(), I cannot immediately start
>>> it again cause it has some open sockets in TIME_WAIT state. It throws
>>> address already in use exception at me.
>>>       
>> There's a reason for that. It's to ensure that there are no leftover packets 
>> floating around the Internet somewhere, that you might mistakenly receive 
>> and think they were part of a new connection, when they were in fact part of 
>> an old one.
>>     
>
> In theory, that is indeed the reason for the TIME_WAIT state.  In practice, 
> however, using SO_REUSEADDR is pretty safe, and common practice.
>
> You've got several things working in your favor.  First, late-delivery of 
> packets is pretty rare.  Second, if some late packet were to arrive, the 
> chances of them having the same local and remote port numbers as an 
> existing connection is slim.  And, finally, the TCP sequence number won't 
> line up.
>
> One thing to be aware of is that SO_REUSEADDR isn't 100% portable.  There 
> are some systems (ISTR HP-UX) which use SO_REUSEPORT instead of 
> SO_REUSEADDR.  The original specifications weren't very clear, and some 
> implementers read them in strange ways.  Some of that old code continues in 
> use today.  I only mention this because if you try SO_REUSEADDR and it's 
> not doing what you expect, it's worth trying SO_REUSEPORT (or both) to see 
> what happens on your particular system.
>
>   
>> The right thing to do is try to ensure that all your connections are 
>> properly closed at shutdown. That may not be enough (if your server crashes 
>> due to bugs), so the other thing you need to do is retry the socket open, 
>> say, at 30-second intervals, until it succeeds.
>>     
>
> That may be a reasonable thing to do for production code, but when you're 
> building and debugging a server, it's a real pain to not be able to restart 
> it quickly whenever you want (or need) to.
>   
Thanks for a great answer, Roy!