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listeners: clean up stale Unix socket files on Windows (#7676)

* Delete old unix domain socket files on Windows

While Windows doesn't have the need to reuse a socket file descriptor
by dup()ing it on config reloads, there still is a valid need for an
equivalent to the `syscall.Unlink()` call in listen_unix.go (also in
`reuseUnixSocket`).

If a previous Caddy instance didn't terminate properly, the chances it
will leave behind a socket file are very high, breaking all subsequent
starting attempts. Other than for regular files, Windows seemingly has
no way for a process to flag a UNIX domain socket file with `FILE_DELETE_ON_CLOSE`,
which means this scenario can never be avoided entirely (e.g. in the case
of crashes).

For the long comment on `isAbstractUnixSocket`: the logic itself is likely
of dubious value, but I thought it better to explicitly reference the
issue, as I have just spent half an hour searching the web to figure out
whether abstract names will work or not on Windows. At least, the logic
as-is should now do the sensible thing if these are ever implemented
properly (and it matches what the Golang standard library does internally).

* Add a dial attempt to check for active server processes

As @steadytao pointed out (thanks!), the previous code didn't have
solid proof that an existing unix socket file had really been orphaned,
as it's also possible that there's another server process (still running).

This would still give the Windows implementation parity with the unix
one (as that one also unlinks the socket file without further checks),
but I've performed a couple of small tests and found this way of handling
socket files still problematic at least problematic if Caddy is used as
a reverse proxy in real world scenarios.

In tests with a simple Caddyfile that only declares an admin socket,
starting two caddy instances with the same Caddyfile works and behaves
like one would expect: the second instance removes the first instance's
socket file and "wins" the race.

When Caddy is used as a reverse proxy, though, what'll happen is more
complicated: While the second instance wins the race for the admin
socket, as long as the Caddyfile specifies a TCP downstream socket,
the second process will not be able to take this one over from the first
(also to be expected, that's how socket binding usually works).

This results in a rather broken state: The first process still holds on
to its TCP listening sockets, the second process fails to start because
of the error in its listening attempt, leaving an orphaned admin socket
file in the file system. Afterwards, the second process won't be running
and the first _will_ be running but unable to be controlled because its
admin socket has been replaced. This leaves the system in another state
that is bad from an ops perspective.

With this new change, we try first to connect to any unix socket that
isn't already covered by our current process (with a very low timeout)
and can easily decide if the socket is still in use by another process:

- If the connection is accepted, there's obviously a server process.

- If Windows returns WSACONNREFUSED [^1], there is either no active
  server process for the socket file anymore, or the socket file does
  not exist.

- Any other errors are likely a sign that there still is a server process
  (e.g. a timeout would indicate that it's just slow in accepting new
  connection attempts).

[^1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winsock/windows-sockets-error-codes-2#wsaeconnrefused

* chore: tidy Windows unix socket reuse helper

---------

Co-authored-by: Zen Dodd <mail@steadytao.com>
M
mfrischknecht committed
6a64bb2ce55b9a0aaf89f0372a7381aefdebd530
Parent: 4d69457
Committed by GitHub <noreply@github.com> on 4/29/2026, 11:52:04 AM