epmd

[dg@REDACTED]

On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 06:14:29PM +0100, Richard Barrett wrote:
> I raised the problem on this mailing list of multiple copies of epmd 
> being spawned when multiple copies erl were run, each of which only 
> knew about the instance of beam that spawned it. Further, all epmd 
> instances were successfully listening on port 4369.
> 
> Initial opinions in response were that this should be impossible and 
> might be due to a screwed up kernel on my Suse 6.2 Linux controlled 
> machine.

Here from my copy (you can get one too!) of the 2.3.99pre8 kernel
sources is a longish comment on SO_REUSEADDR:

--- include/net/tcp.h:55 ---
/* There are a few simple rules, which allow for local port reuse by
 * * an application.  In essence:
 *      
 *      1) Sockets bound to different interfaces may share a local port.
 *         Failing that, goto test 2.
 *      2) If all sockets have sk->reuse set, and none of them are in
 *         TCP_LISTEN state, the port may be shared.
 *         Failing that, goto test 3.
 *      3) If all sockets are bound to a specific sk->rcv_saddr local
 *         address, and none of them are the same, the port may be
 *         shared.
 *         Failing this, the port cannot be shared.
 *
 * The interesting point, is test #2.  This is what an FTP server does
 * all day.  To optimize this case we use a specific flag bit defined
 * below.  As we add sockets to a bind bucket list, we perform a
 * check of: (newsk->reuse && (newsk->state != TCP_LISTEN))
 * As long as all sockets added to a bind bucket pass this test,
 * the flag bit will be set.
 * The resulting situation is that tcp_v[46]_verify_bind() can just
 * check
 * for this flag bit, if it is set and the socket trying to bind has
 * sk->reuse set, we don't even have to walk the owners list at all,
 * we return that it is ok to bind this socket to the requested local
 * port.
 *
 * Sounds like a lot of work, but it is worth it.  In a more naive
 * implementation (ie. current FreeBSD etc.) the entire list of ports
 * must be walked for each data port opened by an ftp server.  Needless
 * to say, this does not scale at all.  With a couple thousand FTP
 * users logged onto your box, isn't it nice to know that new data
 * ports are created in O(1) time?  I thought so. ;-)   -DaveM
 */
---------------------------

Dunno if this helps...

-dg

-- 
David Gould                                                 dg@REDACTED
SuSE, Inc.,  580 2cd St. #210,  Oakland, CA 94607          510.628.3380
C++ : an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog