Subject: Can wustl ftpd timeout *during* a command?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 11:36:45 +1000

re: wu-ftpd 2.4  (on SunOS 4.1)

I guess what I'm having is the same 'persistent hung ftpd's that others have
described earlier.

These hung processes I get have all finished with a STOR cmd entry in the log,
and are just sitting at the read(2) or getc(3) calls in ftpd.c:receive_data.

Yes I know there is a timeout option.  But as I understand it, it only sets
the alarm in yylex(), just before getting commands from the client, then it
is reset straight after.  i.e. we can only timeout *waiting* for a command,
not while executing a command.

I don't know why an EOF isn't received by the server.  I've tried killing
clients mid-transfer, but can't reproduce whatever it is that other users are
doing every day.

So... should I just go and stick a signal handler and alarm request in there,
before receive_data'ing and reset it after, or am I missing something more
fundamental?

Thanks in advance,

C. Arnold

(lowly tech something of other)