On Tue, 29 Aug 2000 15:16:07 +0200 Johan Fabry <johan.fabry at vub.ac.be> wrote:
>> >The bug is that sometimes the client sends data, but never gets a reply.
>> >This is because, apparently, the server never recieves the data. Also,
>> >clientside, even though socket DataAvailable returns true, when reading
>> >data from the socket no data is read. This can be seen by the 'W'
>> >printouts on the transcript. 
>> 
>> Two things that might be of interest:
>> - on the server, is a connection ever made in the cases that fail? Or does it simply fail to receive all or some of the 79 characters? In other words, how far does the server get?
>
>As far as I can see, no connection is ever registered on the server. It
>never gets to the handlePacket: loop where data is read from the socket,
>and it does not sit waiting for data to appear on the socket in
>handleConnection:. As far as I can see, the server never detects the
>socket.

Hi Johan,

If I understand this correctly, the client thinks he has a connection (he would not have gotten to the W part otherwise), but the server appears not to be aware of the connection. I have seen behavior like this before and my best guess at what was happening in that case was that, prior to the current server being started, another listen on the same port wasn't properly cleaned up, leaving something in the OS accepting connections without passing them on to the current server. Two experiments might shed some light on this:

- When the problem is occurring, stop the current server and then see if a client can connect. I would try the connect a number of times in case it is an intermittent thing.
- Does rebooting the server machine help?

Cheers,
Bob