I have a piece of C network software that currently works in listen and fork mode. It's listening on some server socket and accepts incoming connection. Then it calls the core server function providing the new accepted socket.
Now I'm trying to make that software also work behind xinetd (depending on some runtime parameter). I tried to directly call the core server function providing file descriptor 0 instead of an accepted socket, but this method is just not working. The program immediately stops with a SIG_PIPE.
Is there any obvious reason for such behavior ? My core function performs some low level socket calls and signal handling. Is that supposed to work behind xinetd ?
Not absolutely certain but not everything you can do on a socket handle also works with ordinary file handles. For a start, you can't write to stdin. Also some system calls probably need a socket e.g. recv().
Edit
Another possibility: does your server process close stdin as part of its start up?