Subject: Problem with ftpd needing inetd restart and other things

From: Dan Foster <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 13:51:13 -0500 (EST)

Howdy!
	My second post to the list in months. :) Been following for a while
now. I may have missed something, but I don't think I've seen the particular
item of interest to date, so...

	I'm running a site that has Linux 1.2.13 on a Pentium 90 with 64
megs of RAM, and is the primary DNS server for the domain, as well as the
ftp server for all users (real and anonymous). So it sure does get a good
workout, esp. when people make available files of questionable taste. ;-)

	I was running 2.4.2 beta 8 for a while...now beta 9. The last few
days before I upgraded to beta 9, I noticed that the ftp server doesn't
seem to be responding to ftp connects "ftp: connection refused" (or something
along those lines), but kill -HUP'ing inetd clears up the problem. The same
is also true if I ftpshut the server, then delete the /etc/shutmsg file...
I have to kill -HUP inetd to get ftp restarted. The problem is still around
even though I have upgraded to beta 9.

	Is this normal, a known feature, or a bug?

	Also... I made sure my configuration was correct through the check
program supplied with the distribution, looks good. Double-checked all
config and makefiles. I know that it is tracking number of users ok, etc.

	However it's not disconnecting idle users (i.e. users that has been
idle for 10, 12 hours) which is problematic because it's preventing the
corresponding number of users from connecting due to the limits imposed.
I could up the limits...but the problem would still re-occur, although after
a longer period of time. Is this normal? What could cause this kind of thing?

	Last thing. :) Virtual domains... I had enabled VD's in beta 7 and
onward, but noticed that it seemed to break the 'upload' keyword, which
I need at my site, so I disabled virtual domains. Does anybody know if this
has since been fixed or where I could find a decent VD patch that doesn't
break anything?

	Now, if there is any areas where more specific information is
required, please let me know and I'd be glad to supply it (strace output,
ldd, ls -l, whatever...). Many thanks! :)

-Dan Foster
E-Znet, Inc.
Internet: [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Dan Foster)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 06:50:45 -0400

>>In article <[email-masked]> Dan Foster
>><[email-masked]> writes:

>Stan O. Barber writes:
>Folks tell me it is a bug, but I can't reproduce it on my test systems. I
>am waiting for someone to provide me with a specific senario so I can
>reproduce it on one of my test systems (BSDI, Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, SunOS
>or Solaris). If you can provide that, I can work on a fix. Unless I can
>see the bug, I can't fix it.

Understood. I want to produce a *lot* more specific information (specific to
Linux, at least) before I'll do so. My co-worker and I were discussing this...
it sounds as if with a sudden flood of simultaneous connections for ftp,
inetd may have panicked and disabled the ftp service, thinking it was looping
or respawning too quickly for a misconfigured ftp service. Does this sound
anywhere reasonable or a left-field idea? :) I'll still need to look at
ftpshut.c to see exactly how everything works exactly, and so on. We're
considering debugging inetd to see if this is indeed the case...and if we do
go that route, we'd be considering ways to debug inetd effectively without
adding sufficient delays to it to break things.

>This is the first I have heard about this. Have you retested it in beta-9 to
>see if it is still there? If you do find it, please let me know at
>the [email-masked] address.

By golly...the same config (I had commented out the 'virtual' keyword and
the -DVIRTUAL in appropriate files when it didn't work for beta 7 and 8) works
with beta 9 now. Looks mondo cool! :) In the future, I'll re-test each beta or
release version to see if it eliminates a bug or introduces a new one. Sorry for
adding unnecessary traffic to the list.

-Dan

---

From: [email-masked] (Stan Barber)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:42:52 CST

I am glad that one of your bugs has been fixed in beta-9. I look forward to
hearing from you about the other one.

-- 
Stan   | Academ Consulting Services        |internet: [email-masked]
Olan   | For more info on academ, see this |uucp: {mcsun|amdahl}!academ!sob
Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.

---

From: [email-masked] (Dan Foster)
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 15:39:08 -0400

>>saw a few messages in the syslog about inetd disabling ftp because it thought
>>it was respawning too fast. So this does sound related to some sort of limit

>An excerpt from the man page of the inetd in my (old) Linux distribution:
[good advice]

Sorry about wasting list bandwidth for a systems-related problem. Thanks for the
great tip!

-Dan
System Manager
E-ZNet, Inc.