Subject: Re: also process problem

From: [email-masked] (Jim Campbell)
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 09:16:30 -0400

> >recent start times, not 1/1/70 GMT.  I would tend to think these are
> >FTP sessions that are left hanging.  How is your FTP service being used?
> 
> hi jim,
> 
> i also have process-problems, ftp-zombies are left hanging here, 
> even there is no ftp-access present at the moment. 
> 
> i think when someone exits the ftp-session without saying
> "goodby" the process stay's there for ever ... 
> 
> have you any idea, how the system (irix 6.2) can kill such
> ftp-zombies ??

Again, they don't qualify as actual "zombies" until they've exited, and
their process IDs have not yet been returned by a parent's call to
wait().  However you describe it, though, your statement is correct:
the processes would stay around for as long as there is an active
session or an inactive session that has not yet expired the inactivity
timeout period.

I don't know the irix system, but I would expect it has an inetd.conf,
or something much like it.  Why not set your inactivity timeout
parameter to the ftp daemon to be more aggressive than the default 15
minutes?

In Solaris, you would have this line in your inetd.conf:

ftp stream  tcp nowait  root    /usr/sbin/in.ftpd   in.ftpd -t60

This would give you a 60-second timeout for inactivity, rather than
the default 15 minutes.

Irix users, any corrections or stipulations to the above?

Jim Campbell  | [email-masked]  (W) 716/253-0294 (F) 716/253-5959
CI/DPS        | http://dpsnet.dpspps.kodak.com/jimc (Kodak only)
Eastman Kodak | Lotus Notes: Jim Campbell/484675/DAI/EKC@Kodak