Bug 7414

Summary: linuxconf-vpop3d chrashes
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: niels <nmr>
Component: linuxconfAssignee: Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.1CC: jack
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-12-02 19:16:24 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description niels 1999-11-29 16:20:26 UTC 
set up a virtual email-domain with linuxconf. every now and then (say twice
a week) the vpop3d just stops saying:
inetd[426]: pop-3/tcp server failing (looping), service terminated.
Comment 1 jack 1999-11-30 16:50:59 UTC 
This is not a bug in vpop3d. This is a normal message from inetd. inetd
is the one starting vpop3d for every session. It tries to avoid a denyal of
service attack. It limits the number of connection to 40 per minutes. If you
get more, it is assuming that you are either under attack or that the vpop3d
service is failing so the client are retrying and retrying. So it disable
the service for 5 minutes.

40 connections per minutes is generally too low for many servers, especially
ISPs. In the file /etc/inetd.conf, locate the vpop3d line and change the nowait
word for nowait.100. Here 100 is just a number bigger than 40. I assume that if
you get this problem twice a week, you are just border line with 40 (the
default) so 100 will be plenty enough.