[44950] in Cypherpunks
Strange Unix behavior dealing with utmp - anyone recognize this?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dr. Frederick B. Cohen)
Thu Dec 7 22:42:10 1995
From: fc@all.net (Dr. Frederick B. Cohen)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 22:30:44 -0500 (EST)
I was sending out a few hundred 25K emails over a period of a minute or so
when my systemn encountered this thrilling sequence:
Dec 7 22:11:56 all vmunix: file:<3>zs1: silo overflow
Dec 7 22:11:57 all syslogd: /etc/utmp: File table overflow
Dec 7 22:11:56 all vmunix: table is ful<3>zs1: silo overflow
It appears to be some sort of file table overflow related to the syslog
daemon. The message repeats numerous times and I think it has to do
with the number of messages sent over a short time, however:
I regularly send far more messages without this error
It lost the processes that were generating these messages
so I had to redo part of the mailing.
Does anyone recognize the symptom, and does this open a potential for
attack by stress? (e.g., if you can get something to fail in this way
can the failure cause something to be missed?)
Just thought I'd mention it.
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