reading on sockets when connection breaks

[Michael@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU N. Lipp]

Hello,

I have a program that establishes a TCP-connection with another machine,
requests the server to send some packets of data and then does a

while (read (fd, &packet, sizeof (packet)) == sizeof (packet)) { ... }

This program hangs frequently. I made it QUIT and found it hanging in the
read. As this program frequently connects to diskless machines that are
switched off at night, I assume that the connection comes down while
the program is reading.

I am wondering: shouldn't read return with an error status if the connection
breaks? As it apparently does not, what is the most reasonable fix?
A blocking read with timeout comes to my mind, but what is the best
way to do this?

Thanks Michael

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