How to make a TCP socket time out

I believe that the idea of the socket being unavailable to a program is to allow any TCP data segments still in transit to arrive, and get discarded by the kernel. That is, it's possible for an application to call close(2) on a socket, but routing delays or mishaps to control packets or what have you can allow the other side of a TCP connection to send data for a while. The application has indicated it no longer wants to deal with TCP data segments, so the kernel should just discard them as they come in.

I hacked out a little program in C that you can compile and use to see how long the timeout is:

#include <stdio.h>        /* fprintf() */
#include <string.h>       /* strerror() */
#include <errno.h>        /* errno */
#include <stdlib.h>       /* strtol() */
#include <signal.h>       /* signal() */
#include <sys/time.h>     /* struct timeval */
#include <unistd.h>       /* read(), write(), close(), gettimeofday() */
#include <sys/types.h>    /* socket() */
#include <sys/socket.h>   /* socket-related stuff */
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>    /* inet_ntoa() */
float elapsed_time(struct timeval before, struct timeval after);
int
main(int ac, char **av)
{
        int opt;
        int listen_fd = -1;
        unsigned short port = 0;
        struct sockaddr_in  serv_addr;
        struct timeval before_bind;
        struct timeval after_bind;

        while (-1 != (opt = getopt(ac, av, "p:"))) {
                switch (opt) {
                case 'p':
                        port = (unsigned short)atoi(optarg);
                        break;
                }
        }

        if (0 == port) {
                fprintf(stderr, "Need a port to listen on\n");
                return 2;
        }

        if (0 > (listen_fd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0))) {
                fprintf(stderr, "Opening socket: %s\n", strerror(errno));
                return 1;
        }

        memset(&serv_addr, '\0', sizeof(serv_addr));
        serv_addr.sin_family      = AF_INET;
        serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
        serv_addr.sin_port        = htons(port);

        gettimeofday(&before_bind, NULL);
        while (0 > bind(listen_fd, (struct sockaddr *)&serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr))) {
                fprintf(stderr, "binding socket to port %d: %s\n",
                        ntohs(serv_addr.sin_port),
                        strerror(errno));

                sleep(1);
        }
        gettimeofday(&after_bind, NULL);
        printf("bind took %.5f seconds\n", elapsed_time(before_bind, after_bind));

        printf("# Listening on port %d\n", ntohs(serv_addr.sin_port));
        if (0 > listen(listen_fd, 100)) {
                fprintf(stderr, "listen() on fd %d: %s\n",
                        listen_fd,
                        strerror(errno));
                return 1;
        }

        {
                struct sockaddr_in  cli_addr;
                struct timeval before;
                int newfd;
                socklen_t clilen;

                clilen = sizeof(cli_addr);

                if (0 > (newfd = accept(listen_fd, (struct sockaddr *)&cli_addr, &clilen))) {
                        fprintf(stderr, "accept() on fd %d: %s\n", listen_fd, strerror(errno));
                        exit(2);
                }
                gettimeofday(&before, NULL);
                printf("At %ld.%06ld\tconnected to: %s\n",
                        before.tv_sec, before.tv_usec,
                        inet_ntoa(cli_addr.sin_addr)
                );
                fflush(stdout);

                while (close(newfd) == EINTR) ;
        }

        if (0 > close(listen_fd))
                fprintf(stderr, "Closing socket: %s\n", strerror(errno));

        return 0;
}
float
elapsed_time(struct timeval before, struct timeval after)
{
        float r = 0.0;

        if (before.tv_usec > after.tv_usec) {
                after.tv_usec += 1000000;
                --after.tv_sec;
        }

        r = (float)(after.tv_sec - before.tv_sec)
                + (1.0E-6)*(float)(after.tv_usec - before.tv_usec);

        return r;
}

I tried this program on 3 different machines, and I get a variable time, between 55 and 59 seconds, when the kernel refuses to allow a non-root user to reopen a socket. I compiled the above code to an executable named "opener", and ran it like this:

./opener -p 7896; ./opener -p 7896

I opened another window and did this:

telnet otherhost 7896

That causes the first instance of "opener" to accept a connection, then close it. The second instance of "opener" tries to bind(2) to the TCP port 7896 every second. "opener" reports 55 to 59 seconds of delay.

Googling around, I find that people recommend doing this:

echo 30 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_fin_timeout

to reduce that interval. It didn't work for me. Of the 4 linux machines I had access to, two had 30 and two had 60. I also set that value as low as 10. No difference to the "opener" program.

Doing this:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_tw_recycle

did change things. The second "opener" only took about 3 seconds to get its new socket.

You are looking for LoginGraceTime in your sshd_config.

From sshd_config(5):

LoginGraceTime
             The server disconnects after this time if the user has not successfully logged in.  If the value is 0, there is no time
             limit.  The default is 120 seconds.