WaitUntilPortOpens() - How to wait until process A runs and binds to a port before spawning process B?

Sometimes we have situations where you need to wait until one application is loaded that may bind to a certain port before kicking off a second application that may depend on that port. This process is typically described as “Wait-Until-Port-Opens” (or it could be the reverse - where you want to wait until a port closes).

Here are some use-cases for this method or script:

• You have a Java web application (Jetty, Tomcat, WildFly, etc) that listens on port 8080 and you want your Nginx or Apache HTTPd server to start as a proxy-server once that back-end web server is bound to port 8080.

• You want to spin off your Kong (microserver management) after, your back-end REST server is up and listening on port 123.

• Or the reverse, where you want to kick off an email alert-notification, if you are unable to bind to a certain port where your web server runs and it has now crashed.

On a Linux system, this can be accomplished in many ways. Tools like netcat (nc), netstat, telnet makes this very simple. You can write a bash script that accomplishes this easy. But not all footprints may have those libraries installed. For example, if you’re switching from CentOS 6.8 to CentOS 7. A lot of the network tools are no longer available or their binaries are not yet ready for prime-time on the new SystemD footprint in CentOS 7. Netcat is one of those tools not yet ready in the CentOS 7. So you will need a common independent way to scan for the port.

First, let’s look at how this can be done using the above tools:

# Depends on netcat (nc)
# Run netcat and try binding to port 8080 on localhost. 
# If not sleep for five-seconds and repeat until it's available
while ! echo exit | nc localhost 8080; do sleep 5; done

# Variation of the above that depends on netstat utility
while netstat -lnt | awk '$4 ~ /:8080$/ {exit 1}'; do sleep 5; done

# If you know the process-id of your service, then you
PID=1234
while ! lsof -n -Fn -p $PID | grep -q '^n.*:8080$'; do sleep 5; done

# Variation that depends on netchat (nc)
# If the port is open, then do nothing but if the port goes down then react
while ! nc -q 1 localhost 8080 

# Most (99.999%) Linux systems have "timeout" and "sleep" commands available so the below 
while ! timeout 1 bash -c "echo > /dev/tcp/localhost/8080"; do sleep 5; done;
# Do something here such as spawning a new service