How to make a named pipe not busy after client has disconnected?

Question

I use a named pipe and I want to reuse the same pipe on the server to allow connecting another client once the original client has disconnected. What I do is:

• serv

Answer 1

Experimenting with various calls, I have found following to work fine:

In reaction to ERROR_PIPE_NOT_CONNECTED, server should perform:

  // allow connecting, no wait
  DWORD mode = PIPE_NOWAIT;
  SetNamedPipeHandleState(_callstackPipe,&mode,NULL,NULL);
  ConnectNamedPipe(_callstackPipe,NULL);
  mode = PIPE_WAIT;
  SetNamedPipeHandleState(_callstackPipe,&mode,NULL,NULL);

ConnectNamedPipe makes the pipe connectable (not busy) again.

Note: pipe state is changed temporarily to PIPE_NOWAIT, as otherwise ConnectNamedPipe blocks the server thread waiting for the client infinitely.

Other solution could probably be to close the handle completely on the server side and open it again.