ftp problem

[Dan Bonham]

I have a situation where an entity ftp's to my server and picks up the same(updated) files every night at 9:45. This has been happening for years with only a few problems. As of Monday, It started failing and from what we can tell, the user logs in, successfully gets 1 of 9 files, then when it tries to get file 2 of 9, they get a connection timed out error.

The only thing that has changed in the last month is I applied the March 2001 General release bundle. This is a K server running 11.0.

Any help would be great.

Thanks,
Rusty Sapper

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Rusty,

I think it's been too long since you applied the GR bundle for that to be your problem. The error you are getting seems to be simply that ftpd sees too long an idle time. I would edit /etc/inetd.conf and find the ftp entry.
Check for a -t seconds options where seconds is the timeout interval. (By default, it is 900; 15 mins.) If it is too small, I would increase it and if it is not set I would set it to an explicit value (perhaps 1800 or 3600).
I would also add the -L argument to log commands so that you might see what is causing the problem. After you make the changes to inetd.conf do an inetd -c to force inetd to re-read the conf file.

Given the error you are seeing this does not appear to be a WAN/LAN issue but I can't entirely rule it out.

Hopr this helps, Clay

[Laurent Paumier]

Try adding -l and -v flags to the ftpd command in /etc/inetd.conf. This will log every ftp command received in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log.

[Dan Bonham]

Clay,
I made those changes to the inetd.conf file, thanks.
Let me give some more info though. The log file on the client side says "connection inturrupted or timed out" and when I looked at the syslog it shows the ftp session starting at 9:45 and ending 3 minutes later, That why I don't think they actually timed out. I'm trying to think of any other process that would terminate an ftp session.

Thanks,

Rusty Sapper

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Okay Rusty that's a horse of a different color.
Now I'm almost positive that you have communications problems. You haven't mentioned your network configuration so I don't know if you are using the Internet or PPP or a dedicated WAN. The very first thing I would check is the speed/duplex settings on the UNIX box and the switch. You can use lanadmin (man lanadmin) to examine the UNIX box's settings.
Make sure that they match on the switch side. I strongly urge you not to use auto-negotiate on either end but rather hard set the values.

Next, have the client end make the same checks for speed/duplex settings.It is really surprising how well things work even if one end is mis-matched. It will appear to work but you will notice that the tranfer rates are way down. I would transfer some files and determine if the transfer rate is near the expected value.

This should get you close to the fix.

Regards, Clay