Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!cpsc6a!rtech!llama!jas
From: jas@llama.rtech.UUCP (Jim Shankland)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: System crash when using sockets
Message-ID: <1543@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 17:04:54 GMT
References: <88@cui.UUCP>
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: jas@llama.UUCP (Jim Shankland)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 24

In article <88@cui.UUCP> spahni@cui.UUCP (SPAHNI Stephane) writes:
>I have a question about sockets on Unix: I tried to use a socket between
>two processes, and regularly crash the system (i.e. the system is looping
>somewhere in the kernel and is doing nothing else !). The only way to
>recover is to halt the system (^P HALT on Vax, L1-A on Sun) and reboot
>it !

Looks like a kernel bug I've encountered before.  Somewhere in the UNIX
domain socket code are lines to this effect:

/* Close any half-open connections of an exiting process. */
while (the list of half-open connections != NULL)
	soclose( head-of-list );

This loop has the property that it will either execute not at all,
or forever, since the list pointer is not advanced.

Solution (well, workaround):  user Internet domain sockets instead
of UNIX domain sockets.  They're only half as fast, even intra-machine,
but they DO work.
Jim Shankland
 ..!ihnp4!cpsc6a!\
              sun!rtech!jas
.!ucbvax!mtxinu!/