Couldn't read from socket error: Is this a bug in Java?

Question

I have been facing this grave problem for a long time now. After establishing a socket connection with some server:port say 207.123.17.20:1865, I get this error "Couldn't read from socket" as an IOException. I can neither read or send any packets to the server after receiving this error. On checking whether the socket connection is alive or not, I print socket.getAddress() and it returns me the ip of the server to which it is connected. The specification says that receiving this error means the socket was closed by the server. If it so then how I am able to print the server address after receiving this error? How can I get around this problem? Plz. help...

Answer 1

watertownjordan said:
If your computer (client) killed the connection, it should throw an error >pointing to the OS closing the connection. but what if my client app cntrl alt del while the server is waiting to here from the client.
my client may sit idle for hours and then contact again. i want to keep their socket connected but if they cntrl alt del then i want to close the socket so the thread on the server side can be exited.
the way i solved this was to send an "i'm still here" message to the serv in a timer every 10 seconds and set the time out on the server side to 30 seconds.
i used a syncronized boolean variable like so:
    volatile private boolean out1busy = false;
    private synchronized boolean getOut1busy(){
     return out1busy;
    private synchronized void setOut1busy(boolean on){
     out1busy = on;
    }then in the timer i do this
        while (getOut1busy()) try { Thread.sleep(40); } catch (InterruptedException ex) {}
        setOut1busy(true);
        lobbyOut.println("-1");
        setOut1busy(false);it seems to work fine but the loop using the thread.sleep does not seem right and i know very little about this all.
i'm basically asking the same thing as Chintan.Kanal
Is there any way I can test whether the socket connection is alive from the server side?
does my approach above have flaws.
again it seems to work but i am not very Java savy lol.