"comsat doesn't die"

2007-12-25 9:25:00

Original question :

> I have a strange problem with a comsat server process on IPX running 4.1.3.

> It affects only one user who logins from a Mac. His .cshrc and .login

> files do not differ from other people files, nor other Mac users have the

> same problem. The problem is that in.comsat never dies for that user, and

> I have to manually kill it after a while. The ps reads the folowing:

> user 26134 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 20:58 0:00 in.comsat 240

> user 26840 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 05:43 0:00 in.comsat 240

> user 27031 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 08:43 0:00 in.comsat 240

> user 25980 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 18:36 0:00 in.comsat 240

> user 26553 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 03:27 0:00 in.comsat 240

> user 26620 0.0 0.0 36 0 ? IW 04:43 0:00 in.comsat 240

>

Thanks for their responses to

        craven@cg.NRCan.gc.ca

        thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca

        jim@nga.com

In my case, unfortunately, none applied. I have searched a bit more and

I hope I have the answer. The problem is not on the SUN side, but on a Mac,

in the MacX settings. The user have changed (and forgotten about this) the

path, and was using /usr/openwin/bin/xterm, not an xterm from X11R5.

I put a proper path to an xterm and all the comsats are properly exiting.

So far one week passed by, and I had no comsats :)

Nadya Williams, UCSD

-----------------------------

>From craven@cg.NRCan.gc.ca

>We had much the same problem. The source of our problem was some bad

>entries in the utmp file which were causing the comsat daemon to fire

>up whenever the user associated with the bad entries logged in and

>issued a 'biff y' command. See the man page on in.comsat for a little

>more info. Removal of the bad entries in the utmp file (in our case

>by I think we killed a few csh processes) will likely rid you of the

>extra comsat's that don't die. Our OS was sunos4.1.3_u1 so if yours is

>solaris the above may not apply.

>

>Good luck,

>

> Jim

no bad entries in utmp on my system

-----------------------------

>From thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca

>

>Hi!

>

>There is a patch for this...

>

>check out http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/patches/patches.html

>

>I had to apply one for the same sort of thing.

>

>sue

I have installed that patch (Patch-ID# 100272-07) in 1995...

---------------------------------------

> From jim@nga.com

> Hope you get an answer. Maybe it will narrow the search a bit

> to know that I had the same sort of problem on a sun ipc 4.1.3.

>

> Used to run Biff on the console window. Things would be fine

> for a week or so then one day there would be 200 comsats......

>

> good luck

> Jim Roy

just like I had, except things were fine for a day or so...

-----------------------------------------

> From thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca

> If the user is on a machine that / fills up on, and has biff

> running, you'll also get a load of these comsats hanging around

> until / gets space and biff can print out to the console..

>

> sue

no sign of / filling up...

----------------------------------------

> From thielen@irus.rri.uwo.ca

> Comsat isn't dieing because biff isn't getting it's output

> out. See whether or not biffs output is working or not...

>

> I think...

>

> THen get them to not use it until you find a fix

>

> sue

the biff was set to "y" and working.

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