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Conference turris::digital_unix

Title:DIGITAL UNIX(FORMERLY KNOWN AS DEC OSF/1)
Notice:Welcome to the Digital UNIX Conference
Moderator:SMURF::DENHAM
Created:Thu Mar 16 1995
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:10068
Total number of notes:35879

9347.0. "loss of carrier too harsh" by CSC32::PITT () Tue Apr 01 1997 12:08

    Customer supplies fault tolerant systems to his customers. He states
    that when he takes these systems out to his customer sites, the first
    thing his customer does is pull the ethernet cable. This eventually
    causes the system to hang which (would) causes his customer to lose
    millions of dollars if they were to buy these systems from him.....
    
    He is currently testing with 4.0 dunix. 10Bt. Systems are running NIS
    and bind and all sorts of network apps that LIKE to see a network.
    He feels that system should NOT report a carrier lost more than ONE
    time. He feels that disconnecting the ethernet cable should NOT cause
    the system to eventually hang. 
    
    I got tired of argueing with him, so I was hoping that one of you
    engineering types wouldn't mind redesigning the way dunix sees
    loss of ethernet connection so this customer could be happy and buy
    more of our systems. Please let me know when you anticipate making
    these changes so I can pass it along to my customer. I told him that
    I wouldn't expect much before Thursday......... 
    
    thanks
    Cathy  8-}                                     
                  
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9347.1is it a feature?SMURF::DUSTINTue Apr 01 1997 13:3218
    If you take a closer look, you will see the system is probably
    not hung, rather, all the jobs which attempt to run and need a
    network are sleeping waiting for a reply from the (non-existent)
    network.  Anything that needs to translate user names or hostnames
    into uids and ip addresses will stall while attempting to reach
    a remote NIS or BIND server.
    
    If you change all of your services to local, then disconnecting
    the network cable should not affect anything (other than you can't
    use the network anymore).
    
    If your customer has evidence to the contrary, then it qualifies
    as a bug and a QAR should be entered so it can be fixed.
    
    thanks!
    
    John