Very Computer

  I have a Solaris 8 x86 box that I'm playing around with as a webserver.  I
am running into a problem
with it and need some help.  It is with the nscd program.  It eats up all my
ram!  (this is not a big
system, it's a Pentium 200 with 64MB of ram)  The program is fine when the
system boots then
a week later the system is out of ram and is swapping.  Killing and
restarting the daemon fixes it
temporarily.

  I have done a bunch of googling and this is apparently a known memory leak
problem.  It's also apparently
been known by Sun for years and years after Solaris 8 was released and they
never bothered to
fix it.  Since I get a ton of virus queries (what webserver doesen't) the
reverse queries (I guess it's reverse queries) must create a lot of DNS
traffic and fill the cache for this daemon up real quick.

  Sun has a patch for this, 110711-01 and a newer one 110711-02 but it is
not included in
the cluster patch, I have no clue why.  It seems with this program since it
was never written
correctly in the first place that it should have been in the cluster patch.
Anyway, it's contract-only.
I don't have a service contract on this, this Solaris was the $99 media-only
special that Sun was
selling a few years ago.

  If anyone could e-mail me the 110711-02 patch I would be grateful.  I know
I can kill and
restart this daemon periodically it is what I am doing now.  But it's a
sloppy hack.  And I have
read that just turning it off is not wise as some programs will core dump
during DNS queries
if it's not running.  (besides making queries take a sucky long time)

Thanks!

Sam

http://sunsolve6.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-21-110711-02-1

Elias

Quote:> Hi All,

>   I have a Solaris 8 x86 box that I'm playing around with as a webserver.
I
> am running into a problem
> with it and need some help.  It is with the nscd program.  It eats up all
my
> ram!  (this is not a big
> system, it's a Pentium 200 with 64MB of ram)  The program is fine when the
> system boots then
> a week later the system is out of ram and is swapping.  Killing and
> restarting the daemon fixes it
> temporarily.

Quote:>   I have done a bunch of googling and this is apparently a known memory
leak
> problem.  It's also apparently
> been known by Sun for years and years after Solaris 8 was released and
they
> never bothered to
> fix it.  Since I get a ton of virus queries (what webserver doesen't) the
> reverse queries (I guess it's reverse queries) must create a lot of DNS
> traffic and fill the cache for this daemon up real quick.

>   Sun has a patch for this, 110711-01 and a newer one 110711-02 but it is
> not included in
> the cluster patch, I have no clue why.  It seems with this program since
it
> was never written
> correctly in the first place that it should have been in the cluster
patch.
> Anyway, it's contract-only.
> I don't have a service contract on this, this Solaris was the $99
media-only
> special that Sun was
> selling a few years ago.

>   If anyone could e-mail me the 110711-02 patch I would be grateful.  I
know
> I can kill and
> restart this daemon periodically it is what I am doing now.  But it's a
> sloppy hack.  And I have
> read that just turning it off is not wise as some programs will core dump
> during DNS queries
> if it's not running.  (besides making queries take a sucky long time)

> Thanks!

> Sam

Quote:

> You can get any patch without a contract by using the link on Sun
> Solve marked:
> "Try the NEW SunSolve Search (Beta version)!"

> http://sunsolve6.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-21-110711-02-1

Sam

Quote:

> Just stop it entirely.  You do not need nscd.  Just rename
> /etc/rc2.d/S76nscd to _S76nscd and the system will not
> start nscd when next reboot.

http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/retrieve.pl?doc=fsalert%2F27344&zone_...

Document ID 27344 titled:

"Applications Compiled Using the "Sun WorkShop 5.0 C++ Compiler" May Fail
While Performing DNS Lookups"

"...Only systems that do not have the "nscd" process ("name service cache
daemon") running are affected. The "nscd" process is started during reboots
by default. ..."

This is the problem with quick hacks.  You never know when they will blow
up.

Sam