List:       juniper-users
Subject:    juniper-users smtpd issue.  smtpd hangs in CLOSE_WAIT for many 24.x (home.com) connections.
From:       "Cameron Mandrake" <mandrake () dragon ! org>
Date:       2001-08-07 21:04:14
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I was wondering if anyone might be able to tell me what might cause smtpd to
lock in CLOSE_WAIT for many 24.x (home.com) mail server connections.  This
has been going on for a few months, and I never had this problem before, and
only have it now with home.com servers.  It's not with every home.com
connection, either.  It's intermittent.

Smtpd causes the load to raise about 1 point for every process locked in
CLOSE_WAIT, and until I wrote a script to kill all the smtpds in CLOSE_WAIT
from 24.x addresses after a few minutes, I have found the server with 12 or
13 load averages pretty regularly.

I am running Linux with a 2.4.4 kernel on a P3/933 with 512 MB RAM.  Again,
it's only doing this with some home.com connections.

A connection comes in, and it sits in 'ESTABLISHED' for a while, and then
seems to time out, and goes to 'CLOSE_WAIT' and immediately, I get another
incoming connection from the same server, and it will repeat this over and
over until it either delivers the message or errors out, which can take a
few days.

Home.com support was very unhelpful and actually blamed the problem on my
MTA which was, according to them, "overly restrictive of spam".  It doesn't
reject the connection, so I think they are on crack, but who knows.

Any help is appreciated.  I am getting desperate for a fix.  I've been using
smptd for a few years now and this is the only problem I've ever really had.

-Cameron Mandrake
mandrake@dragon.org