Subject: timeouts on gets and puts?

From: Dave Morrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 17:33:48 -0700

I'm new to this list and have searched high and low for FAQs and list
archives to no avail, so please excuse me if this issue is a rerun.

While there's a nice timeout waiting for commands, there isn't any for
getting and putting files.  This means is that if someone starts doing a
retrieve, gets bored, suspends the local ftp during a get/put, the
server will stay up hogging memory for a very long time.  Enough people
do this and now the machine is at its user or memory limit.  Guess how I
found this out :).

For the quick fix, I'm thinking of adding a timeout in send_data and
receive_data (ftpd.c) in the read and write loops, where if the timeout
period has elapsed and no data has been sent, the server shuts down.

There is the more general issue that any place not covered by a timeout
is a potential way a user can get an archive server to effectively
reduce its available user count by one.  There could be more than just
those in the read/write loops of get and put.

Comments?

Thanks,

Dave Morrison                  All statements are my own and do not
[email-masked]         necessarily represent those of Oracle.