A failed bind is swallowed and start() then busy-loops forever

[dmccoystephenson]

Problem

A failed bind is swallowed, and the accept loop then spins without bound.

MultiServer's constructor calls initializeServerSocket() and ignores its boolean result (lines 14-17). On failure that helper prints Something went wrong while initializing with port 2000! and leaves serverSocket as null (lines 40-48).

start() then runs (lines 19-26):

public void start() {
    listening = true;

    while (isListening()) {
        System.out.println("Listening for a new connection...");
        createNewServerThread();
    }
}

createNewServerThread() calls serverSocket.accept() on the null reference, catches the resulting exception, prints ERROR: Was not able to listen on port 2000, and returns false — which the loop discards. Nothing sets listening back to false, so the loop repeats immediately and forever.

Starting a second server while port 2000 is already held is therefore expected to produce an unbounded flood of alternating "Listening for a new connection..." and "ERROR: Was not able to listen on port 2000" lines rather than an exit.

Related: stop() does not stop anything

stop() (lines 28-30) sets listening = false, but in the healthy case the loop is blocked inside accept() and will not re-test the flag until a connection arrives. serverSocket is never closed by anything in the tree.

Evidence

Read from src/SimpleServer/server/MultiServer.java, lines 14-59, and src/SimpleServer/server/ServerApp.java lines 8-12 (which hardcodes port 2000).

The busy-loop output described above is UNVERIFIED — no compile or run was performed in the session that filed this issue. The discarded return values and the absent listening reset are source-verifiable; the observed flood is inferred from them.

Proposed change

The bind failure should stop startup rather than being swallowed: either the constructor refuses to leave a half-built server, or start() declines to loop when no socket was bound. A failed createNewServerThread() should not be ignored indefinitely.

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This issue was drafted during a Gardener session (https://github.com/Stephenson-Software/gardener).

drafted by Claude on behalf of Daniel Stephenson