where can I find socket files? ( I want unlink it and remove it..)

Question

I'm doing debugging for a program that uses UDP socket. The program creates a socket but after that due to some other problems the program gets stuck and I cannot kill it properly. So I close the command shell and the process goes into 'defunct' state. I guess the socket has not been released in this process because next time I run the program, during the socket creation, it says 'create : Address already in use'. Of course I can start the experiment again if I reboot the computer (actually a small board, with ubuntu 16.04 installed).
I know everything in linux is file, so there should be the socket file somewhere. and I have read here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34873151/how-can-i-delete-a-unix-domain-socket-file-when-i-exit-my-application) that I can unlink the socket(using command unlink) and remove it. Where can I find the socket file and how can I get information about the socket file(after I find it)?

Answer 1

Have a Google for the UDP (and TCP) socket parameter called "REUSEADDR" (or "SO_REUSEADDR" etc.) as well as REUSEPORT (to see the difference).

If you use "REUSEADDR" when you create the UDP socket in your app, then SO_REUSEADDR flag will be set when binding to the port. This means that multiple threads or processes can bind to the same address:port without error (provided they all set the flag). Note that only the last process to bind will receive traffic, taking control from the previous listener (in your case, the dead app).

When designing server apps, it is good practice to set the REUSEADDR flag, to allow for fast restarts of the service, else you sit waiting for the bind to succeed. This will allow you to restart your app, without having to hack the socket files, which should be left to the system to manage.

Answer 2

I think lsof -iUDP is what you're looking for:

$ sudo lsof -iUDP
COMMAND    PID     USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
avahi-dae  726    avahi   12u  IPv4  21843      0t0  UDP *:mdns 
avahi-dae  726    avahi   13u  IPv6  21844      0t0  UDP *:mdns 
avahi-dae  726    avahi   14u  IPv4  21845      0t0  UDP *:46374 
avahi-dae  726    avahi   15u  IPv6  21846      0t0  UDP *:34483 
NetworkMa  732     root   23u  IPv4  32835      0t0  UDP stewbian:bootpc->_gateway:bootps 
postgres   848 postgres    8u  IPv6  21908      0t0  UDP localhost:58947->localhost:58947 
postgres   849 postgres    8u  IPv6  21916      0t0  UDP localhost:35817->localhost:35817 
postgres   850 postgres    8u  IPv6  21912      0t0  UDP localhost:40321->localhost:40321 
postgres   858 postgres    8u  IPv6  21908      0t0  UDP localhost:58947->localhost:58947 
postgres   859 postgres    8u  IPv6  21908      0t0  UDP localhost:58947->localhost:58947 
postgres   860 postgres    8u  IPv6  21908      0t0  UDP localhost:58947->localhost:58947 
postgres   861 postgres    8u  IPv6  21908      0t0  UDP localhost:58947->localhost:58947 
postgres   865 postgres    8u  IPv6  21912      0t0  UDP localhost:40321->localhost:40321    0t0  UDP localhost:35817->localhost:35817 
postgres   877 postgres    8u  IPv6  21916      0t0  UDP localhost:35817->localhost:35817 
cups-brow 5729     root    7u  IPv4 153431      0t0  UDP *:631 

You can see you have the PID and the process name. I suspect that is enough to kill $PID to unbind the address.