Freeing a port used with ServerSocket

Question

I have a server running in a thread that I want to start start and stop. After stopping it and restarting it, I get the following exception: "Address in use: JVM_Bind". I do not understand why.
When I start, I do this:
serverSocket = new ServerSocket(PORT);
socket = serverSocket.accept();
accept() blocks while it waits for a connection. However, when I want to stop, I interrupt the block and force the server to stop, like this:
// Close the streams in order to interrupt the thread
socket.getInputStream().close();
socket.getOutputStream().close();
interrupt();
socket.close();
socket = null;
serverSocket.close();
serverSocket = null;
After this, trying to start the server again on the same port gives me the address already in use exception.
How do I prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

Hmmmm, it appears that your socket is not getting closed because interrupt() throws an exception skipping the remaining code (including the socket.close()).
interrupt() is meant to be called from another thread to wake a sleeping thread. Calling it from the current thread won't really accomplish anything.
If you're trying to shut down the thread while it's blocked on the socket.accept(), you need to enclose the code in a try/catch block, catch InterruptedException, and call Thread.interrupt() from another thread.
Bob