html - Perl: Connection reset with simple HTTP server

Question

I am attempting to write a very simple HTTP server with Perl to serve up a single html file. Almost every time I go to the site, however, I get a "connection reset" error (it does however work something like 5% of the time). I have read this post, but I can't make anything of it.

The server I started with can be found here, but I am attempting to modify it to

a) read in a file instead of using hard-coded html and

b) read this file with every new HTTP request so changes can be seen with a refresh.

Here is my code:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Socket;
my $port = 8080;
my $protocol = getprotobyname( "tcp" );
socket( SOCK, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $protocol ) or die "couldn't open a socket: $!";
## PF_INET to indicate that this socket will connect to the internet domain
## SOCK_STREAM indicates a TCP stream, SOCK_DGRAM would indicate UDP communication
setsockopt( SOCK, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1 ) or die "couldn't set socket options: $!";
## SOL_SOCKET to indicate that we are setting an option on the socket instead of the protocol
## mark the socket reusable
bind( SOCK, sockaddr_in($port, INADDR_ANY) ) or die "couldn't bind socket to port $port: $!";
## bind our socket to $port, allowing any IP to connect
listen( SOCK, SOMAXCONN ) or die "couldn't listen to port $port: $!";
## start listening for incoming connections



while( accept(CLIENT, SOCK) ){
    open(FILE, "<", "index.html") or die "couldn't open "index.html": $!";
    while(<FILE>) {
        print CLIENT $_;
    };
    close FILE;
    close CLIENT;
}

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

You don't read the HTTP request from the client, i.e. you close the connection while there are still data to read. This will probably cause the RST.