*BSD News Article 88656


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From: "Arlie Davis" <arlie@test.thepoint.net>
Subject: Help!  Run-away processes!
Message-ID: <01bc13a6$891e8970$070906c6@roanoke>
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 1997 20:52:39 GMT
Organization: ThePoint Internet Services, Inc.
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I'm experiencing some problems with run-away processes under FreeBSD.  This
happens to me no matter what version I run.  I've tried 2.1.0, 2.1.5,
2.1.6.1, 2.2-961014-SNAP, and lots of other snaps.

When a user logs off without exitting certain applications, the processes
run non-stop in the background.  This happens most often with Pine and
Lynx, though it also happens with vi.  For virtual TTYs (from Telnet
sessions), this is mostly just an annoyance.  Part of my morning ritual is
to run top and nuke these processes.  And frankly, FreeBSD's scheduler is
so good that my system barely notices 10 run-away processes; it still
performs quite nicely.

Here's the Big Problem, though: We're using FreeBSD as a relatively large
access server for a pool of about 100 modems.  Everything works great,
except that, occasionally, a pppd process will exhibit the same problem. 
There is little rhyme or reason to it.

Is there a problem with SIGHUP behavior under FreeBSD?  How does FreeBSD
handle SIGHUP on carrier loss?  I know some variants of UNIX send a HUP
signal to every member of the tty's process group.  From looking at the
kernel source (and from what I know of POSIX), FreeBSD is supposed to
deliver the signal only to the leading process in the process group.  Well,
I can see how this might be a problem for the Pine situation, but not for
pppd, because pppd is the _only_ process that runs on the tty.

Help!  This is causing me a lot of grief.  If you have any clues, please
mail me.  Also, if you respond to this in the newsgroup, please cc: me
privately; this newsgroup sees quite a bit of volume.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-- arlie