Subject: Re: Problem with ftpd needing inetd restart and other things

From: [email-masked] (Dan Foster)
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 14:34:51 -0400

>>         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?

As I mentioned in a later mail and now is confirmed, my co-worker and I finally
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
on concurrent connection attempts to the FTP service and inetd subsequently
panicking. Anybody know what this number would be or any tricks to circumvent
this? I find this rather disturbing because we are a small site and get this
relatively often enough (temp fix: a cron job that runs every minute and kill
-HUPs inetd) on busy days, and can't imagine how larger sites handle this kind
of problem.

Any general tuning machines for large FTP access tips, out of curiosity?

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

---

From: Riku Saikkonen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 22:19:28 +0200 (EET)

>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:
"
     to spawn new servers.  The optional ``max'' suffix (separated from
     ``wait'' or ``nowait'' by a dot) specifies the maximum number of server
     instances that may be spawned from iinneettdd within an interval of 60 sec-
     onds. When omitted, ``max'' defaults to 40.
"

It's probably similar in other inetds... So, change `nowait' to `nowait.200'
or something in your inetd.conf's ftp entry.

-- 
-=- Rjs -=- [email-masked] - http://isil.lloke.dna.fi/rjs/