System.IO.Exception: Pipe is broken

Question

I have two .NET applications that talk to each other over a named pipe. Everything is great the first time through, but after the first message is sent, and the server is going to listen again, the WaitForConnection() method throws a System.IO.Exception with message Pipe is broken.
Why am I getting this exception here? This is my first time working with pipes, but a similar pattern has worked for me in the past with sockets.

Code ahoy!
Server:

using System.IO.Pipes;

static void main()
{
    var pipe = new NamedPipeServerStream("pipename", PipeDirection.In);
    while (true)
    {
        pipe.Listen();
        string str = new StreamReader(pipe).ReadToEnd();
        Console.Write("{0}", str);
    }
}

Client:

public void sendDownPipe(string str)
{
    using (var pipe = new NamedPipeClientStream(".", "pipename", PipeDirection.Out))
    {
        using (var stream = new StreamWriter(pipe))
        {
            stream.Write(str);
        }
    }
}

The first call to sendDownPipe gets the server to print the message I send just fine, but when it loops back up to listen again, it poops.

Answer 1

I'll post my code that seems to work - I was curious since I never did anything with pipes. I didn't find the class you name for the server-side in the relevant namespace, so here's the code based on the NamedPipeServerStream. The callback stuff is just because I couldn't be bothered with two projects.

NamedPipeServerStream s = new NamedPipeServerStream("p", PipeDirection.In);
Action<NamedPipeServerStream> a = callBack;
a.BeginInvoke(s, ar => { }, null);
...
private void callBack(NamedPipeServerStream pipe)
{
  while (true)
  {
    pipe.WaitForConnection();
    StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(pipe);
    Console.WriteLine(sr.ReadToEnd());
    pipe.Disconnect();
  }
}

And the client does this:

using (var pipe = new NamedPipeClientStream(".", "p", PipeDirection.Out))
using (var stream = new StreamWriter(pipe))
{
  pipe.Connect();
  stream.Write("Hello");
}

I can repeat above block multiple times with the server running, no prob.

Answer 2

The problem for me has occurred when I would call pipe.WaitForConnection() from the server, after the client disconnected. The solution is to catch the IOException and call pipe.Disconnect(), and then call pipe.WaitForConnection() again:

while (true)
{
    try
    {
        _pipeServer.WaitForConnection();
        break;
    }
    catch (IOException)
    {
        _pipeServer.Disconnect();
        continue;
    }            
 }

Answer 3

I had the same problem - it is caused by disposing server's StreamReader by Using...End Using, which also take down NamedPipeServerStream. Solution is simply don't Using...End Using it and trust in garbage collector.