bind-8.2.2-P5 hangs on defunct named-xfer

[Jan-Erik Eriksson]

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999 Mark_Andrews at iengines.com wrote:

>> We are running bind-8.2.2-P5 with the nc_ctl.c patch on a redhat 6.1 i386
>> box. About once a day I get a zombie named-xfer, marked as <defunct> in
>> the ps listing. 
>> 
>> When this happens named stops answering requests. It remains bound to it's
>> listen port, so that clients believe it is working ok. This means that the
>> fallback to the next nameserver, stated in resolv.conf, never happens.
>
>	We have had no reports of named not reaping its children with
>	the current release.  Failing to reap a child should not cause
>	the problems you are describing.  Also named not answering will
>	not prevent the resolver from falling over to the next nameserver.
>
>	Firstly please confirm that you are running BIND 8.2.2-P5, use
>	ndc status.

named 8.2.2-P5 tis nov 30 14:02:00 EET 1999

>	Second can you please get a system call trace when named gets into
>	this state.

Well, I am not sure exactly under what conditions this happens. Which
means that is a bit hard to reproduce. I'll see what I can do.

>	Thirdly is there anything being logged when this occurs.

Nope. 

Of course, until the problem has been pinpointed, it is not possible to
rule out that there might be something else causing the problem. However,
running a dig on another machine to the named in question also hangs when
the problem is present. This is why my first suspicion was named. Stopping
and then starting named will make the problem disappear.

-- Janne
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