Linux: is there a read or recv from socket with timeout

clinuxsocketstcp

How can I try to read data from socket with timeout?
I know, select, pselect, poll, has a timeout field, but using of them disables "tcp fast-path" in tcp reno stack.

The only idea I have is to use recv(fd, …, MSG_DONTWAIT) in a loop

Best Answer

You can use the setsockopt function to set a timeout on receive operations:

SO_RCVTIMEO

Sets the timeout value that specifies the maximum amount of time an input function waits until it completes. It accepts a timeval structure with the number of seconds and microseconds specifying the limit on how long to wait for an input operation to complete. If a receive operation has blocked for this much time without receiving additional data, it shall return with a partial count or errno set to [EAGAIN] or [EWOULDBLOCK] if no data is received. The default for this option is zero, which indicates that a receive operation shall not time out. This option takes a timeval structure. Note that not all implementations allow this option to be set.

// LINUX
struct timeval tv;
tv.tv_sec = timeout_in_seconds;
tv.tv_usec = 0;
setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVTIMEO, (const char*)&tv, sizeof tv);

// WINDOWS
DWORD timeout = timeout_in_seconds * 1000;
setsockopt(socket, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVTIMEO, (const char*)&timeout, sizeof timeout);

// MAC OS X (identical to Linux)
struct timeval tv;
tv.tv_sec = timeout_in_seconds;
tv.tv_usec = 0;
setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_RCVTIMEO, (const char*)&tv, sizeof tv);

Reportedly on Windows this should be done before calling bind. I have verified by experiment that it can be done either before or after bind on Linux and OS X.

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