Yet Another 'Connection reset by peer' Error

Question

I'm creating a server/client application in python using the socket module and for whatever reason my server keeps ending the connection. The weird part is this works in Windows perfectly but not Linux. I've looked all over the place for a possible solution but none of them worked. Below is a sanitized version of the code which exploits the bug, however, with a higher success rate. Normally it never works. Hopefully this is still enough information. Thanks!

Server:

import logging
import socket
import threading
import time

def getData():
    HOST = "localhost"
    PORT = 5454

    while True:
        s = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM )
        s.setsockopt( socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1 ) #because linux doesn't like reusing addresses by default

        s.bind( ( HOST, PORT ) )
        logging.debug( "Server listens" )
        s.listen( 5 )
        conn, addr = s.accept()
        logging.debug( "Client connects" )
        print "Connected by,", addr

        dataRequest = conn.recv( 1024 )
        logging.debug( "Server received message" )

        time.sleep( .01 ) #usually won't have to sample this fast

        data = """Here is some data that is approximately the length 
of the data that I am sending in my real server. It is a string that
doesn't contain any unordinary characters except for maybe a tab."""

        if not timeThread.isAlive(): #lets client know test is over
            data = "\t".join( [ data, "Terminate" ] )
            conn.send( data )
            s.close()
            print "Finished"
            print "Press Ctrl-C to quit"
            break
        else:
            logging.debug( "Server sends data back to client" )
            conn.send( data )

        logging.debug( "Server closes socket" )
        s.close()

def timer( t ):
    start = time.time()
    while ( time.time() - start ) < t:
        time.sleep( .4 )
        #sets flag for another thread not here

def main():
    global timeThread

    logging.basicConfig( filename="test.log", level=logging.DEBUG )

    #time script runs for
    t = 10 #usually much longer (hours)

    timeThread = threading.Thread( target=timer, args=( t, ) )
    dataThread = threading.Thread( target=getData, args=() )
    timeThread.start()
    dataThread.start()

    #just for testing so I can quit threads when sockets break
    while True:
        time.sleep( .1 )

    timeThread.join()
    dataThread.join()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Client:

import logging
import socket

def getData():
    dataList = []
    termStr = "Terminate"

    data = sendDataRequest()
    while termStr not in data:
        dataList.append( data )
        data = sendDataRequest()
    dataList.append( data[ :-len( termStr )-1 ] )

def sendDataRequest():
    HOST = "localhost"
    PORT = 5454

    s = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM )

    while True:
        try:
            s.connect( ( HOST, PORT ) )
            break
        except socket.error:
            print "Connecting to server..."

    logging.debug( "Client sending message" )
    s.send( "Hey buddy, I need some data" ) #approximate length

    try:
        logging.debug( "Client starts reading from socket" )
        data = s.recv( 1024 )
        logging.debug( "Client done reading" )
    except socket.error, e:
        logging.debug( "Client throws error: %s", e )

    print data

    logging.debug( "Client closes socket" )
    s.close()

    return data

def main():
    logging.basicConfig( filename="test.log", level=logging.DEBUG )
    getData()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Edit: Adding traceback

Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "client.py", line 39, in <moduel>
        main()
    File "client.py", line 36, in main
        getData()
    File "client.py", line 10, in getData
        data = sendDataRequest()
    File "client.py", line 28, in sendDataRequest
        data = s.recv( 1024 )
socket.error: [Errno 104] Connection reset by peer

Edit: Added debugging

DEBUG:root:Server listens
DEBUG:root:Client sending message
DEBUG:root:Client connects
DEBUG:root:Client starts reading from socket
DEBUG:root:Server received message
DEBUG:root:Server sends data back to client
DEBUG:root:Server closes socket
DEBUG:root:Client done reading
DEBUG:root:Server listens
DEBUG:root:Client sending message
DEBUG:root:Client connects
DEBUG:root:Client starts reading from socket
DEBUG:root:Server received message
DEBUG:root:Server sends data back to client
DEBUG:root:Client done reading
DEBUG:root:Client sending message
DEBUG:root:Client starts reading from socket
DEBUG:root:Server closes socket
DEBUG:root:Client throws error: [Errno 104] Connection reset by peer
DEBUG:root:Server listens

Tom's theory appears to be correct. I'll try to figure out how to close the connection better.

This isn't solved but the accepted answer seems to point out the problem.

Edit: I tried using Tom's getData() function and it looks like the server still closes the connection too soon. Should be repeatable since I couldn't get it to work in Windows either.

Server Output/Traceback:

Connected by, ('127.0.0.1', 51953)
Exception in thread Thread-2:
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/threading.py", line 532, in __bootstrap_inner
        self.run()
    File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/threading.py", line 484, in run
        self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
    File "server.py", line 15, in getData
        s.bind( ( HOST, PORT ) )
    File "<string>", line 1, in bind
error: [Errno 22] Invalid argument

Client Output/Traceback:

Here is some data that is approximately the length
of the data that I am sending in my real server. It is a string that
doesn't contain any unordinary characters except for maybe a tab.
Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "client.py", line 49, in <moduel>
        main()
    File "client.py", line 46, in main
        getData()
    File "client.py", line 11, in getData
        data = sendDataRequest()
    File "client.py", line 37, in sendDataRequest
        print data
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'data' referenced before assignment

Log:

DEBUG:root:Server listens
DEBUG:root:Client sending message
DEBUG:root:Client connects
DEBUG:root:Client starts reading from socket
DEBUG:root:Server received message
DEBUG:root:Server sends data back to client
DEBUG:root:Server closes connection
DEBUG:root:Client done reading
DEBUG:root:Client closes socket
DEBUG:root:Client sending message
DEBUG:root:Client starts reading from socket
DEBUG:root:Client throws error: [Errno 104] Connection reset by peer

Update: I used Tom's getData() function but moved the s.bind() to before the loop and got it to work. I honestly don't know why this works so it would be cool if somebody could explain why the server closing it's client socket is safe but not when it closes it's server socket. Thanks!

Answer 1

While I can't reproduce this issue (on Windows 7 64-bit, Python 2.7), my best guess is that the following is happening:

• Server listens
• Client connects
• Client sends "Hey buddy, I need some data"
• Server receives this
• Server sends data back to client
• Server closes socket
• Client attempts to read from socket, finds that it's been closed
• Client throws the "connection reset by peer" error.

The stacktrace you added from the client seems to support this theory. Is it possible to prove that isn't the case with some additional logging or similar?

Other things of note: If your client doesn't find the terminate string in the first data it receives, it opens a new socket to the server. That looks wrong to me - you should read data from the same socket until you have it all.

Edit: Couple more things:

In your example log output, you haven't updated the code so I can't see where each log line comes from. However, it looks suspiciously like you have 2 clients running in parallel (in different processes or threads maybe?), which leads to:

I just noticed one final thing. In the example here https://docs.python.org/2/library/socket.html#example the server doesn't close the socket, it closes the connection generated from listening on the socket. It may be that you have 2 clients connected to the same server socket instance, when you close the server socket you are actually disconnecting both connected clients, not just the first. If you are running multiple clients then logging some sort of identity Eg. DEBUG:root:Client(6) done reading might help prove that.

Could you try the following for the server's data thread main loop, will show if the problem is related to closing the listen socket rather than the connected socket:

def getData():
    HOST = "localhost"
    PORT = 5454

    s = socket.socket( socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM )
    # s.setsockopt( socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1 ) #because linux doesn't like reusing addresses by default
    s.bind( ( HOST, PORT ) )
    logging.debug( "Server listens" )
    s.listen( 5 )

    while True:

        conn, addr = s.accept()
        logging.debug( "Client connects" )
        print "Connected by,", addr

        dataRequest = conn.recv( 1024 )
        logging.debug( "Server received message" )

        time.sleep( .01 ) #usually won't have to sample this fast

        data = """Here is some data that is approximately the length 
of the data that I am sending in my real server. It is a string that
doesn't contain any unordinary characters except for maybe a tab."""

        if not timeThread.isAlive(): #lets client know test is over
            data = "\t".join( [ data, "Terminate" ] )
            conn.send( data )
            conn.close()
            print "Finished"
            print "Press Ctrl-C to quit"
            break
        else:
            logging.debug( "Server sends data back to client" )
            conn.send( data )

        logging.debug( "Server closes connection" )
        conn.close()