Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Why does X not use SO_KEEPALIVE?
Message-ID: <21669@news.Think.COM>
Date: 5 Jun 89 03:49:08 GMT
References: <8905241247.AA00833@expire.lcs.mit.edu> <9740091@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Reply-To: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 20

In article <9740091@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> diamant@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM (John Diamant) writes:
>> I definitely think that this is a case where keepalives are warranted.
>> I'm getting sick of having to hunt down all my xterms whenever my
>> server crashes.
>I'm told that KEEPALIVE wouldn't solve your problem here anyway.  It only
>solves the problem on remote connections when the server machine actually
>crashes (panic, powerfail, whatever, or is disconnected from the network).  

Read my lips: "whenever my server crashes".  My server is a Symbolics
3640 Lisp Machine, and from time to time it crashes with a hard disk
error.  I usually warm boot it, and this reinitializes the network
software, thus getting rid of all the TCP connection without sending
RST packets (the warm boot software doesn't want to trust that the old
TCB's haven't been corrupted by the crash).

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar