That's not what the perlfunc entry for *my* getsockopt says--mine says:

    getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME
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Are you talking about getsockopt or setsockopt? Sounds like the latter. But if you're writing it as getsockopt, that's the problem. :)

If you're using IO:Socket, this is much easier:

    my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(
        Listen    => 5,
        LocalAddr => 'localhost',
        LocalPort => 9000,
        Proto     => 'tcp');
 
    $sock->setopt(SO_SNDTIMEO, 1);
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It acts on the SOL_SOCKET level.

In terms of a general resource--you said you've read the man pages. Have you read the man pages for the C functions that all this stuff is based on? Those might help you out. The options for setsockopt/getsockopt are in setsockopt(2).