Zombie problem on reconnect - socket program with fork() , help needed

[Guest_imported]

This program is called "rout2.pl"!!!! I am telling you this so the system() call makes sense. This program causes a zombie every time I have to reconnect after getting disconnected. The entire program actualy consists of 4 seperate processes working together with two seperate perl progs talking through local loopback via sockets and one acting as a virtual hard drive so the entire
network of 20 progs can read and right to it. The virtual hard drive code is not listed. Stripped down code of perl prog #1 is listed below. Thanks....


#!/usr/bin/perl
use IO::Socket;
$returnaddr="localhost";



&Begin;

sub Begin {


$server="192.168.100.20";
$port = "2346";

$remote = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto=>"tcp", PeerAddr=>$server,
PeerPort=>$port, LocalAddr=>$returnaddr, LocalPort=>$port, Reuse=>1);

if (!defined($remote)) {
&Noconnect;
}else{
print "-----I am connected on port: $port\n";
$remote->autoflush(1);
}
}

sub Noconnect {
print "Could not connect\n";
sleep 2;
&Begin;
}


#vcons request through server below#
$portb = 2345;
$maxconn = SOMAXCONN;
$server = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto=>"tcp", LocalPort=>$portb,
Listen=>$maxconn, Reuse=>1) or die "Can't setup server\n";
print "-----I receive all requests. Listening on port: $portb\n";


die "fork fail: $!" unless defined($kid = fork);
if ($kid) {


close $server;
my $buf;

while (sysread($remote, $buf, 1) == 1) {

print $buf . "\n";

}
close $remote;
# kill the child process. But this doesn't
#seem to happen?
kill(TERM => $kid);

#this where the zombies get created
#call to restart prog to reconnect
system('perl', "rout2.pl"
exit;
} else {
#forward all from vcons#
#this is who the zombie is, this guy doesn't get closed
#out when the system() call is called to restart the
#program
while($client = $server->accept){
$client->autoflush(1);
$in = <$client ; #html parser made me minus the greater
print $client &quot;\n\n&quot;;
close $client;
chomp($in);
chomp($in);
print $remote &quot;$in&quot;;


}
close $remote;
exit;
}


Note: All zombies disapear after ctrl+c`ing the final open rout2.pl prog.


Any info on calling adisconnect without ctrl+c`ing would also be great. this would most likely have to be done by sending a specific packet that means &quot;disonnect&quot; which would force the prog into a disconnect routine. I tried this but it failed with more zombies. Is there an ultimate way to just destroy all zombies at any given time?

 

[MikeLacey]

Hi,

Unless you have a lot of zombies you probably don't seen to worry about them. Have a look at the TekTips HPUX forum

Home > Forum Areas > MIS > Operating Systems - UNIX based > HP: HP-UX Forum

And search for &quot;Zombies&quot; for a more detailed explanation (which I should put in a faq, I know, I know)

 

[Guest_imported]

This program needs to run many years continuously. The server I connect to diconnects about ten times a day which would result in many zombies, restarting the program all the time is not an option. I figured it out none the less, it was actualy a pretty dumb thing to over look:


close $remote;
kill(TERM => $kid);
waitpid(0, $kid)
system('perl', &quot;rout2.pl&quot;
exit;


it just needed to wait for it to finish. Thanks for the reference, I'll have to check that out.