Greetings...
Not sure I'm in *PRECISELY* the right place for this question, as a lot
of the posts appear to involve the hardware of networking more than the
software end of things, so if you know a better place for it, feel free
to let me know.
A bit of background that should keep the "tell me more!" questions from
biting me:
I'm attempting, fairly successfully so far, to write what I guess would
best be described as a "sockets compatibility layer" on top of Apple's
OpenTransport networking architecture, to give Pre-MacOS X Macintoshes a
"works exactly like on *nix" sockets API in order to facilitate porting
*nix-targeted program(s) to the Macintosh with minimal (ideally, zero)
alteration to the networking code the program(s) use.
(Please, everybody, spare me the "Just use GUSI" commentary. For
multiple reasons which have no bearing on this question, GUSI isn't
acceptable, nor is attempting to hack it into acceptability acceptable -
As far as myself and this project are concerned, GUSI is a non-starter,
and won't be considered unless I'm left with *ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER*
alternative)
I've got basic functionality in my package - I can socket(), bind(),
connect(), select() (including the relevant FD_* macros), recv(), and
send() successfully on up to 128 discrete sockets using the code I've
hammered together so far, and everything works as expected - To the
point where I can take a raw *nix-targeted source that uses only those
routines, get it to compile by substituting my compatibility code's
headers for <sys/socket.h> and <sys/select.h>, and actually get it to
function mostly as expected.
What I can't do (yet... Here's where you guys and/or gals come in) is
reliably deal with figuring out if/when the socket is disconnected.
How does a "real Unix" program handle the other end sending a disconnect
request?
For instance, if I'm looping on select() to determine if/when there is
data available to be read, I can't figure out how to indicate "The
conenction has been closed by the other end" so that my loop knows to
stop looping and start doing socket shutdown work.
How would a "real Unix" program do this? What would it be looking at to
find out if the connection is still open and there may be more data
coming in? What, if anything, would be set to say "Hey, stupid! The
socket is disconnected!"?
So far, the best I've been able to accomplish is continuing to select()
and/or recv() until the power is cut, which, for obvious reasons, isn't
acceptable.
One attempt that I've made was to add a "connected" flag to the private,
opaque structure that holds info on the socket, and test that, but
that's NOT the way *nix does it - My goal is to be able to port existing
*nix-targeted code to pre-MacOS X Macintoshes *WITH NO MODIFICATION TO
THE NETWORKING CODE*. Besides - Even if it was the way *nix does things,
once that flag is set, all further processing of any data that might be
left in the socket's buffer ceases - Setting "Socket[sd].connected" to
false essentially dumps any buffered-but-not-yet-read data that may be
in the socket's buffer on the floor, which isn't acceptable for quite a
few reasons that should be self-evident.
Any assistance in this department would definitely be appreciated...
I'll be watching this group for responses, or feel free to email me (The
address in the headers is valid) but if replying via email, please be
certain to leave the Subject: line intact - The "(PopperAndShadow)" at
the end is an anti-spammer "password" into my mailbox - Without it,
anything and everything that comes in addressed to me gets sent directly
to /dev/null by my .procmailrc recipes.
--
Don Bruder -
(E-Mail Removed) - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html> for full details.
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
