Can’t find what’s blocking port 5137

James Turner wrote on Jan 07, 2009

When I start either an ximtool or DS9 on one particular shared machine, I am getting the message that port 5137 is already in use. Attempting to display to that port in IRAF just hangs without returning to the prompt. However, I can't actually find any display tool using that port. There is only one DS9 running on the machine (as another user), but that is using a different port (not only does ps report "ds9 -port 5140" for the command line but I verified that I can indeed telnet to port 5140). If I try telnet to port 5137, it just hangs at "Trying 127.0.0.1...". Typing "netstat -a | grep 5137" shows (if I understand it correctly) various no-longer-running processes with the "CLOSE_WAIT" state, but nothing actually active.

So, I'm just wondering how ximtool/DS9 actually determines that something else is using port 5137 and how to persuade it otherwise. I tried looking in /tmp for some kind of temporary file showing that the port is in use but didn't find anything.

This may seem like a lot of fuss about a small thing, but the machine is used in operations by non-expert users and the problem prevents things working by default without a reboot, so I'd appreciate any hints on how to free up the port :-). It's a good thing to know for next time anyway...

Thanks (and Happy New Year)!

James.

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James Turner wrote on Jan 07, 2009

This problem mysteriously went away as soon as I talked to an administrator... When he typed "netstat -a", it no longer showed anything on port 5137, so I tried ximtool again and this time it worked.

It seems likely this was an OS (Solaris 10) glitch...

James.

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Last post on Jan 07, 2009