I was merely making the point that seemingly openser-related problems are not always to do with openser itself, as in the past whenever restarting openser has failed, I have always assumed it was an entry I may have mistakenly changed in the openser config.

 

I then came to realise this was not always the case when I started making backup copies of my openser configs and after reverting back to them still could not get openser to restart. It then became apparent that there were other (external) factors or conditions which could affect openser restarting or, in general, simply slow it down as reported above. To make an exhaustive list of all these factors would be a futile exercise, nevertheless, it is something worth bearing in mind and certainly something to bring to the attention of others experiencing similar problems.

 

Once we all understand the interaction between Openser and these external elements we can then more effectively diagnose these type of problems.

 

 

On 10/19/06, Mark Kent <mark@noc.mainstreet.net> wrote:

The two messages I read with the above subject seem to overlook
some important concepts:

a) Like many many servers, openser is a high-level application.
  It depends on a complicated under-world of services and protocols.
  The operation of it depends on many external elements, all of which
  should be in good working order.

b) DNS resource records (RR) have time-to-live (TTL) attributes.  Any
  application may cache RR up to the length of time specified by the
  TTL.  When you restart something, you typically blow away the cache
  and start over.  In general, most applications do not cache general
  name lookups, since that is a lower-level function.  However, an
  application caching the hostname it's on and/or IP addresses to
  bind to is standard practice.

>> I have come to realise that it seems as though once loaded into memory
>> and running, openser "caches" the config file and also does not appear
>> to re-check for changes in network conditions

Yes, isn't that great!   It shouldn't check until either told to by a human
or when the underlying protocol indicates that it is time for a refresh
(like a DNS TTL expiring).

Regarding this:

> I had to lock-down the network card to 10mbit full-duplex. It was
> autoselecting 100mbit half-duplex.
> Hope that helps someone... sometime...

Autoselecting 100/half probably means that the link auto-negotiation failed,
as that is the default.  It might fail because the other side was nailed down,
perhaps to 10/full.  That seems like an unlikely choice... but one reason
why it might be nailed at 10mbits is because someone before you couldn't
get it to run well at 100mbits and discovered that setting it to 10
was a "solution."   If that was the case, I'ld guess that the cable between
the switch and the server is lengthy  and that it was not tied down in the
prescribed order (wO, O, wG, Bl, wBl, G, wBr, Br) [or swap O and G].

I apologize if this email comes across as a little snooty.
This is my first email of the day and I often have trouble
phrasing things in a nice way prior to my coffee kicking in.

-mark

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