Re: sendmail 8.9.0

Matti Aarnio (matti.aarnio@sonera.fi)
Wed, 27 May 1998 17:22:40 +0300 (EEST)

> > ftp://ftp.sendmail.org/pub/sendmail/KNOWNBUGS :
> >
> > * accept() problem on Linux.
> > Apparently, the accept() in sendmail daemon loop can return ETIMEDOUT
> > and cause sendmail to sleep for 5 seconds during which time no new
> > connections will be accepted. An error is reported to syslog:
> > Jun 9 17:14:12 hostname sendmail[207]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root):
> > getrequests: accept: Connection timed out
> > "Connection timed out" is not documented as a valid return from
> > accept(2) and this is believed to be a bug in the Linux kernel.
> >
> This is a real problem for me - and I do believe it is a kernel bug.

This is problem for SENDMAIL, not Kernel.

For quite a while I used to do all kinds of drastic things
when accept() returned unexpected values. Then I installed
my software (ZMailer) into Solaris, and were quickly cured
of all such nonsense.

Now if the error is EBADF, I know it is bad, EINTR/EAGAIN are
just "ah well, forget this", and anything else is just: "Ah well,
log it and forget". (The "STREAMS" system is "wonderfull" source
for all kinds of surprises..)

The danger being (of course), that somewhen some system error
condition starts to flood system with logged events of weird
errors. The next thing the sysadm notices is that some disks
are 110% full... But if that condition happens, then the system
is anyway in deep trouble.

> --
> Bjarni R. Einarsson
> bre@margmidlun.is [ THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ]

/Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@sonera.fi>

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