Re: [tpop3d-discuss] Tpop 1.4.2 memory leak?: fork_child: fork: Not enough space

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 05:37:57PM -0800, Rich, WhidbeyNET wrote:
> Both machines ran fine for 6.5 hours, before the tpop3d daemon could no 
> longer fork child processes. All remaining connections were 
> "disconnected" safely by tpop3d, and tpop3d continued to run, but would 
> no longer answer requests on port 110. The last error in the log was:
> 
> "fork_child: fork: Not enough space"
    [...]
> From looking at the code, the error is generated from a -1 return code 
> when trying to call fork().  Has enyone encountered a memory leak with 
> tpop3d, and has it been corrected in the CVS?
> 
> This is pretty serious, as it affected two Solaris 9 machines at the 
> same time, so it's unlikely a machine-specific problem. We were/are 
> ready to implement tpop3d systemwide.

What authenticators are you using? While it's certainly
possible that there are memory leaks in tpop3d -- there
have been in the past -- one source of problems has also
been memory leaks in the PAM libraries. But that's mostly
been on Linux; I can't remember whether I found that
Solaris PAM leaks or not.

If you are using PAM,can you download
    http://ex-parrot.com/junk/pamtest.c
substitute a correct username and password for `user' and
`password' in the call to auth_pam_new_user_pass, and run
the code. If it leaks memory, you have a problem with PAM
on your system.

Of course, if you're not using PAM, this may not be the
problem. More details, please.

-- 
``Think about the average person. Now, half the people
  out there, by definition, are even dumber than that.''
  (L. Ron Hubbard, attrib.)