Why does my ActivePerl program on Windows stop accepting socket connections?

Question

I'm using fork() on Perl on Windows (ActivePerl) for a basic socket server, but apparently there are problems (it won't accept connections after a few times), is there any workaround?

Here is the portion of the relevant code:

while($client = $bind->accept()) {
    $client->autoflush();
    if(fork()){ $client->close(); }
    else { $bind->close(); new_client($client); exit(); }
}

Answer 1

I'd suggest installing Net::Server and using it instead, because there's probably no compelling reason for you to write all of the listening and forking logic yourself, and Net::Server is already well-tested to work on many platforms including ActivePerl. The Net::Server::Fork personality is the most similar to the code you're writing, although I'd suggest using Net::Server::Prefork instead, since it offers better performance at a minimal cost.

Answer 2

If by a few, you mean exactly 64, then you should see this discussion. In the parent process you should call waitpid -1,&WNOHANG every once in a while to clean up the completed children.

Answer 3

Windows doesn't have fork. Attempts to emulate it usually give less than ideal results.

The best solution is probably to rewrite your code so it doesn't use fork. Maybe threads?