test: suppress ECONNABORTED in wait_for_rpc_connection on Windows
What the developer wrote
Authored by Ryan Ofsky
test: suppress ECONNABORTED in wait_for_rpc_connection on Windows
Since bitcoin/bitcoin#33362, feature_bind_port_externalip.py runs in CI and
auto-detects whether 1.1.1.5 is assigned by starting nodes with -bind=1.1.1.5,
then converting a FailedToStartError containing "Unable to bind to" into a
SkipTest. On Windows CI the address is not configured, so bitcoind fails as
expected — but intermittently, while the process is shutting down, an RPC probe
raises ConnectionAbortedError (WSAECONNABORTED/WinError 10053) before
wait_for_rpc_connection() notices that the process has exited. That error was
not in the suppressed set, so it escaped and the test failed instead of being
skipped.
The intermittency is a race on TCP connection timing. If the probe connects
before the RPC port is listening, connect can fail with ECONNREFUSED. If the
TCP connection is established but is then closed abortively during shutdown,
the probe can see a connection-reset/aborted error instead. On POSIX systems
this commonly shows up as ECONNRESET ("connection reset by peer"). Winsock
also has WSAECONNABORTED for cases where an established connection is aborted
locally or otherwise terminated due to a timeout/protocol failure, in addition
to WSAECONNRESET for a reset by the remote side. This is why the
Windows-specific error may need to be suppressed separately.
Fix by treating ECONNABORTED identically to ECONNRESET, ETIMEDOUT, and
ECONNREFUSED: retry the probe rather than raising.
Fix was suggested by willcl-ark in
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/35343#issuecomment-4507329622
Fixes #35343
What changed, and why it matters
This is a test-only fix for a flaky automated test on Windows. It adds one more network error code (ECONNABORTED) to the list of temporary connection errors that the test framework should ignore while waiting for a Bitcoin node to start or shut down. It does not change Bitcoin Core's production code, network behavior, or security.
No security action needed. Treat as a normal test-framework reliability improvement.
Security signals we found
No strong security signals were identified.
Evidence from the diff
The patch modifies test/functional/test_framework/test_node.py so that ConnectionAbortedError (errno.ECONNABORTED / Windows WSAECONNABORTED) is caught and retried inside wait_for_rpc_connection(), alongside ECONNRESET, ETIMEDOUT, and ECONNREFUSED. The race occurs when the functional test starts bitcoind with -bind=1.1.1.5 on Windows CI; the node fails to bind and exits, but an RPC probe can hit an abortively closed connection before the framework detects the process exit. Suppressing the error lets the test framework notice the real failure and convert it to a SkipTest, eliminating a flaky failure.
Changed components
test/functional/test_framework/test_node.pyInspect captured patch +4 / −0
diff --git a/test/functional/test_framework/test_node.py b/test/functional/test_framework/test_node.py
index 1ba2e09b..761f4bbe 100755
--- a/test/functional/test_framework/test_node.py
+++ b/test/functional/test_framework/test_node.py
@@ -378,9 +378,13 @@ class TestNode():
# doesn't specify errno.
elif isinstance(e, ConnectionResetError):
error_num = errno.ECONNRESET
+ # Windows can raise this while bitcoind shuts down during startup.
+ elif isinstance(e, ConnectionAbortedError):
+ error_num = errno.ECONNABORTED
# Suppress similarly to the above JSONRPCException errors.
if error_num not in [
+ errno.ECONNABORTED, # Treat identical to ECONNRESET
errno.ECONNRESET, # This might happen when the RPC server is in warmup,
# but shut down before the call to getblockcount succeeds.
errno.ETIMEDOUT, # Treat identical to ECONNRESET
Why this scored 15/100
Community notes
Notes can correct, qualify, or add evidence to the AI analysis. Every note shown here has been validated by a human moderator.
The AI analysis stands alone for now. Submit a note if you can add evidence or important context.