Detecting a connection loss && other network questions

Hello all,

I'm trying to get acquainted with network programming in Ruby and I'm
facing several problems. The biggest 2 are

1) How do I detect a connection loss when it happens while the client is
blocking, waiting for data? According to Stevens, most tcp
implementations time out after 11 minutes, but I disconnected my cable
and waited long after that--nothing. Is this my fault? Is it a ruby
problem?

2) The client (an IRC bot) seems to be stuck sometimes. Suddenly, input
stops, it stops logging data, everything stops. This happens on a
particular IRC server (heinlein.freenode.net) in the middle of the MOTD,
but happened a few days ago on another server during normal usage. The
code I'm using is

  buffer = @socket.recvfrom(512).first
  messages = buffer.split /\n/

  @messages.last << messages.shift \
    if @messages.last && @messages.last[-1] != ?\r

  @messages += messages

An interesting twist is that this doesn't happen on heinlein upon
connection if I print the contents of the array I get from recvfrom.
Seems to be some kind of flushing problem, but I don't know enough about
it to be sure.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

David

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