signal 14 with ftp

[Brozza_1]

Hello!
2 days ago we got this error message in the syslog file on a machine running 11.00
"ftpd -exiting on signal 14"
We had to reboot it since no login was possible not even from the console. So I reset the system from GSP. Since this incident there have been 2 more "signal 14" messages but no problem with the machine. Has anybody experienced this behaviour before? Happy to get any hints ...

[Mark Grant]

Signal 14 is SIGALRM.

I think the default behavior is to send this signal to all children of a process. Therefore if a process "higher up" in the process group chain that ends up starting ftp, sets an alarm but doesn't trap it properly then it will exit and so will it's children (including ftp).

I might be wrong about this and a SIGALRM isn't sent to children of the process doing the alarm in which case it might be useful if you can tell us how ftp is being started. Something is setting an alarm somewhere.

[Brozza_1]

Hello Mark!

I only know that the ftp is started from a PC, dont even know what operating system. The users usually transfer files to the unix side, files are few hundred MB.

[Mark Grant]

Hi,

I didn't actually notice that it was the ftpd process that is dying and not the ftp process.

You have something spooky going on. Is your ftpd daemon being started with inetd? You can check to see if the relevant entry in /etc/inetd.conf is commented out or not. Actually, it might worth posting the entry for ftpd in /etc/inetd.conf so we can see it. My hunch is that someone has written a script somewhere, perhaps trying to time-out ftp sessions and there is a bug in there somewhere.

[Brozza_1]

hi Mark!

Pls find the inetd.conf entry below:
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/lbin/ftpd ftpd -l
It runs the same way on other machines as well! (sorry got the wrong thread first ...)

[Mark Grant]

Maybe signal 14 isn't SIGALRM on your machine (run "kill -l" to find out). Do you have any scripts that get run regularly on this machine that might do a "kill -14" or perl scripts that use the "alarm" call?

Maybe ftpd times out itself. I am a bit of a loss as to how you are managing to receive this signal :)