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Too many open files in Bind 4.9

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Paul A Vixie

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Dec 6, 1993, 7:02:35 AM12/6/93
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Are you using a Sun system? That's the only one I've seen that has the
"too many open files" problem. I've never been able to track down why it
happens.
--
Paul Vixie
Redwood City, CA
<pa...@vix.com>
decwrl!vixie!paul

Paul J Lustgraaf

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Dec 6, 1993, 12:57:18 PM12/6/93
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Here at ISU, we use 3 DNS servers and 3 Hesiod servers, all running
bind 4.9. When we lose our Internet connection, which unfortunately has
happened twice in the last week, the DNS servers run fine, but the Hesiod
servers give us the old "Too many open files" error and proceed to loop.

Has anyone gotten to the bottom of this error and produced a fix?

Where is the list of changes for bind 4.9.2? I'd like to check there
to see if this has been fixed.

Otherwise, I guess we'll have to fix it ourselves...


--
Paul Lustgraaf "It's easier to apologize than to get permission."
Network Specialist Grace Hopper
Iowa State University Computation Center gr...@iastate.edu
Ames, IA 50011 515-294-0324

John Hascall

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Dec 7, 1993, 9:50:04 AM12/7/93
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vi...@vix.com (Paul A Vixie) writes:
}Are you using a Sun system? That's the only one I've seen that has the
}"too many open files" problem. I've never been able to track down why it
}happens.

Nope. They are all DECstations.

The three machines running the "hesiod" named (with the problem) are:

OS Version: ULTRIX V4.3 (Rev. 44) System #1: Mon Jul 12 10:48:09 CDT 1993
CPU: Personal DECstation 5000/xx (MAXine)
Memory - maxmem: 33452K physmem: 40960K

The three machines running the "normal" named (without the problem) are:

OS Version: ULTRIX V4.1 (Rev. 52) System #1: Thu Mar 21 11:04:14 CST 1991
CPU: DECstation 2100/3100 (PMAX)
Memory - maxmem: 12068K physmem: 16384K


John
--
John Hascall ``An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger.''
Systems Software Engineer
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center + Ames, IA 50011 + 515/294-9551

Paul A Vixie

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Dec 7, 1993, 12:01:22 PM12/7/93
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Sigh. I have not run any version of BIND on any Ultrix later than V4.2.
I suppose they could have introduced something new in V4.3... If you will
turn on tracing and try to correlate trace output with the errors you're
seeing in the syslog, and send me the relevant snippets, I will try to
figure this out. I don't use Hesiod, so it could be related to that.

Stephane Bortzmeyer

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Dec 8, 1993, 7:24:05 AM12/8/93
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In article <CHo6J...@news.iastate.edu>, jo...@iastate.edu (John Hascall) writes:
> Nope. They are all DECstations.

Could it be the problem described in the Ultrix FAQ for DEC's named? At least,
the symptoms are the same:

---------------- begin of FAQ --------------------------
N1. What does the message "named: accept: Too many open files" in syslog mean,
and how can I fix it?

There is a bug in the ULTRIX version of named that causes it to run
out of file descriptors when it does too many zone transfers.

A somewhat different version of named that does not have this problem
can be found in cra-bind.tar.Z. This version cannot use Kerberos for
server-server authentication, as the ULTRIX version can. It does
support Hesiod data and queries. It is not supported by Digital,
although it is in active use on Digital's Internet machines.
[Win Treese, tre...@crl.dec.com]
------------------- end of FAQ --------

Stephane Bortzmeyer Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers
bortz...@cnam.cnam.fr Laboratoire d'Informatique
292, rue Saint-Martin
tel: +33 (1) 40 27 27 31 75141 Paris Cedex 03
fax: +33 (1) 40 27 27 72 France

"C'est la nuit qu'il est beau de croire a la lumiere." E. Rostand

Click <A HREF="http://web.cnam.fr/bin.html/switch_home_page_bortzmeyer.dom">here.</A>

Michael McGovern

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Dec 8, 1993, 7:58:38 AM12/8/93
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vi...@vix.com (Paul A Vixie) writes:

>Are you using a Sun system? That's the only one I've seen that has the
>"too many open files" problem. I've never been able to track down why it
>happens.

I emailed in June you about the same problem which occurs occasionally under
Ultrix 4.2 on a Decstation. You suggested it might be due to an old
version of named-xfer (in my case it wasn't - and I still don't know the
answer).

Mike
====
--

Mike
====

Paul A Vixie

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Dec 8, 1993, 3:47:33 AM12/8/93
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The Ultrix version of BIND gets ``too many open files'' because it fails to
close them. It's a known bug, easy to fix. When I worked for DEC I submitted
a source patch to Ultrix Engineering for it, as did at least one other person
I knew of. As far as I know, the bug is still there in the latest ULTRIX 4.3.

But as far as I know, BIND 4.9 and 4.9.2 both close all their descriptors. The
bug report said that BIND 4.9 and ULTRIX 4.1 work fine, but that BIND 4.9.2 and
ULTRIX 4.3 fail. Either I broke something, or they did, or more likely, both.

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