Rebind TCPserver onthefly ..

[Nagy László Zsolt]

>
>
>I have a xmlrpcserver class, derived from TCPServer. The server does a
>blocking request on a dynamic IP.
>I spawn a thread that compares the address resolved from a dynamic name
>service with that IP bound to the server. If they are different, then the
>dynamic IP has changed and the server should be rebound to the new IP.
>
>My problem is: How can I restart a TCPServer instance that hangs in a
>blocking handle_request() ?
>Under which conditions will handle_request() abort and return?
>Pinging the server won't work, because he waits on an IP that is not valid
>anymore.
>
>  
>
You should not call server_forever. You should create a separate request 
processor thread like this below
(assuming your TCPServer is  named 'server' and you have an Event 
instance named 'server_stopped'):

   srvfd = server.fileno()
   while not server_stopped.isSet():
       ready = select.select([srvfd], [], [], 1) # Give one second for 
incoming connection so we can stop the server in seconds
       if srvfd in ready[0]:
           server.handle_request()
       else:
           pass  # No incoming connection, retrying

Now you can start a separate thread and call

server_stopped.set()

to stop request processing when your IP address changes. After your 
request processor stops (use its join() method) you can
rebind the server and restart request processing. I hope this helps.

 Laci 1.0