[comp.unix.i386] TCP/IP daemon quits sporadically

stewart@netxcom.DHL.COM (John Stewart) (02/01/90)

In article <1990Jan24.185408.2157@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@mcs.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes:
>What >has< happened is that smail3 (sendmail replacement) will die
>occasionally with a protocol error.  It's sitting in background, and all of
>a sudden it stops working.  Killing and restarting it fixes the problem; I'm
>not sure this is a 386/ix problem or one we have here locally :-)

I have seen a similar problem running smail3 under Xenix (which I hacked
to use the 4.1-style sockets library which is offered by Excelan).  The
daemon just dies mysteriously after running for weeks sometimes.  No
zombie, core file, or error message.  So it's not local.
-- 
John Stewart at Effective Computing, Inc.        | Watch out!  You might get
 202-232-5470 stewart@ecompin.uucp               | what you're after!
at NetExpress Communications, Inc.               |  -- Byrning down the house
 703-749-2796 stewart@iad-nxe.global-mis.dhl.com |

karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (02/03/90)

In article <28221@bigtex.cactus.org> james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen) writes:
>In <1990Jan24.185408.2157@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, karl@mcs.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
>wrote:
>
>> What >has< happened is that smail3 (sendmail replacement) will die
>> occasionally with a protocol error.  It's sitting in background, and all of
>> a sudden it stops working.  Killing and restarting it fixes the problem; I'm
>> not sure this is a 386/ix problem or one we have here locally :-)
>
>sendmail has a problem with a "protocol error" too.  The problem is
>that sometimes the socket just stops working: you can't accept any
>more connections.  The "solution" is to close the socket, and get a
>brand new one.  I suspect that this particular bug may be sendmail/tcp
>specific though - the way sendmail interacts with ISC TCP/IP results
>in memory getting clobbered (as has been pointed out, you must
>explicitly set the buffer for an fdopen()'d TCP socket).

I have made that change to smail3; I will let the net know if that takes
care of the problem or not...

--
Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910]
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc.		"Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"