Edited

Original question was about trouble with reconnecting (close() and shutdown() confusion). The below code is the working code (fixed) For Googler's, this script is an IRC bot. Feature list:

• Keep reconnecting until connection available
• If assigned nick is already taken, puts string behind name (repeats until success)
• Listens to PING and responds with PONG
• Can listen to commands and respond
• If connection is lost, the bot will try to reconnect (if no information is received, no PING, in 5 mins, it treats the connection as if it was disconnected)

That is about it :)

Full Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys
import socket
import string
import os
import platform
import time

# Variables
HOST = "irc.server.net"
PORT = 6667
NICK = "Nickname"
IDENT = "Nickname"
REALNAME = os.getenv('USER')
CHAN = "##Channel"
readbuffer = ""

# The Connection itself
keep_connecting = True
while keep_connecting:
    irc = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    irc.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1开发者_运维知识库)
    irc.settimeout(300)
    try:
        irc.connect((HOST, PORT))
        pass
    except socket.gaierror:
        print "No connection, attempting to connect again"
        time.sleep(5)
        continue
    print "Sending info..."
    irc.send("NICK %s\r\n" % NICK)
    irc.send("USER %s %s bla :%s\r\n" % (IDENT, HOST, REALNAME))
    irc.send("JOIN :%s\r\n" % CHAN)
    # Initial msg to send when bot connects
    irc.send("PRIVMSG %s :%s\r\n" % (CHAN, "TehBot: "+ NICK + " Realname: " + REALNAME + " ."))
    while True:
        try:
            data = irc.recv(4096)
            print data
            # If disconneted from IRC
            if len(data) == 0:
                print "Length of data == 0 ?..."
                break
            # If Nick is in use
            if data.find (NICK + " :Nickname is already in use") != -1:
                NICK = NICK + str(time.time())[5:-3]
                break
            # Ping Pong so we don't get disconnected
            if data[0:4] == "PING":
                irc.send ("PONG " + data.split() [ 1 ] + "\r\n")
        except socket.timeout:
            print "Socket timeout!"
            irc.close()
            break

This is most probably because you're switching off wi-fi and the interface is removed from system so you get something like Can't assign requested address. You would get such an error while trying to bind to non-existing local address.

The other thing is you won't be able to reconnect on the same socket after calling close as it releases all resources associated to the socket.