We're using Avalon to handle connections for us.  I'll forward these 
notes on to the Avalon dev list.
-- 
Serge Knystautas
Loki Technologies - Unstoppable Websites
http://www.lokitech.com/

Brad Wallace wrote:
> 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


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