Just a follow-up - I've determined that it takes approximately 1500-1700 tcp connections, one every 5 seconds, to cause this OutOfMemoryError. Without these connections, my James installation is stable for days. It still looks like an easy way to take out a james server - in my case this happens in about 2.2 hours, but I expect that the same effect could be created by sending the connections faster.
I'm going to have to try going back to James 1.2.1 to see if I can get around this b/c it's useless in my environment with this kind of bug. -Brad Brad Wallace wrote: > > Hi All - I'm running James in a load balanced environment (required by > our policies... ;-) One side effect of this is that the load balancers > establish repeated TCP connections to the SMTP service and then break > them (TCP RST or FIN I expect). They do this to verify that the service > is listening and accepting inbound connections. Right now I'm running > in debug mode, so these connections are being logged - I've included > samples below. > > Here's the problem - after james has been running for some period of > time less than 1 week, I get the following on stdout: > > Logging Error: Unknown error writing event. > java.lang.OutOfMemoryError > <<no stack trace available>> > > and then james stops responding. So far I've had to restart james each > time to get this fixed. I'll admit that the frequent TCP connection > setups and breakdowns are a quirk of this type of environment, but it > concerns me also b/c this seems like an easy DOS (Denial of Service) > attack on a james server - simply establish and break TCP connections > every 5 seconds or so for a while and it will hang until someone > restarts it - it's not yet clear exactly how long you have to repeat > these TCP connections for, but it's somewhere in the hours - days range, > but not weeks. And every 5 seconds probably isn't frequent enough to > trigger most firewall's DOS filters, so this is pretty likely to get > through. > > I'm running: > > James 2.0a2 with just the SMTP listener (no pop3, nntp, remote admin, > etc) > java-1.3.1_02 > Solaris 7 > > Thanks much for any input. > > -Brad > > Logs Excerpts: > > smtpserver.log: > > Tue Apr 23 22:02:58 GMT 2002 [INFO ] (smtpserver): Hello Name is: > <local machine name> > Tue Apr 23 22:02:58 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (smtpserver): Max message size > is: 0 > Tue Apr 23 22:02:58 GMT 2002 [INFO ] (smtpserver): Connection from > <load balancer IP> (<load balancer IP>) > Tue Apr 23 22:02:58 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (smtpserver): Socket to <load > balancer IP> closed remotely. > java.net.SocketException: Connection reset by peer: Connection reset by > peer > at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead(Native Method) > at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:90) > at > java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill(BufferedInputStream.java:186) > at > java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(BufferedInputStream.java:204) > at java.io.DataInputStream.readLine(DataInputStream.java:449) > at > org.apache.james.smtpserver.SMTPHandler.handleConnection(SMTPHandler.java:163) > at > >org.apache.avalon.cornerstone.blocks.connection.ConnectionRunner.run(Connection.java:163) > Tue Apr 23 22:02:58 GMT 2002 [ERROR ] (smtpserver): Connection timeout > on socket > > connections.log: > > Tue Apr 23 22:11:34 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (connections): Starting > connection on Socket[addr=<load balancer IP>/<load balancer > IP>,port=<source port>,localport=<james smtp port>] > Tue Apr 23 22:11:34 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (connections): Ending connection > on Socket[addr=<load balancer IP>/<load balancer IP>,port=<source > port>,localport=<james smtp port>] > Tue Apr 23 22:11:36 GMT 2002 [ERROR ] (connections): Exception > accepting connection > java.net.SocketException: Software caused connection abort > at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method) > at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(PlainSocketImpl.java:468) > at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(ServerSocket.java:243) > at java.net.ServerSocket.accept(ServerSocket.java:222) > at > org.apache.avalon.cornerstone.blocks.connection.Connection.run(Connection.java:93) > at > >org.apache.avalon.excalibur.thread.impl.ExecutableRunnable.execute(ExecutableRunnable.java:47) > at > org.apache.avalon.excalibur.thread.impl.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:80) > Tue Apr 23 22:11:38 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (connections): Starting > connection on Socket[addr=<load balancer IP>/<load balancer > IP>,port=<source port>,localport=<james smtp port>] > Tue Apr 23 22:11:38 GMT 2002 [DEBUG ] (connections): Ending connection > on Socket[addr=<load balancer IP>/<load balancer IP>,port=<source > port>,localport=<james smtp port>] > Tue Apr 23 22:11:40 GMT 2002 [ERROR ] (connections): Exception > accepting connection > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
