[LON-CAPA-dev] ping processes

[Scott Harrison]

> Hi,
> 
> I noticed a flood of ping processes hanging around on our library
> server:
> 
> # ps -ef
> root      9372   841  0  2002 ?        00:00:00 CROND
> www       9382     1  0  2002 ?        00:00:00 sh -c ping -c 1 install.lon-capawww       9383  9382  0  2002 ?        00:00:13 ping -c 1 install.lon-capa.org
> root     14696   841  0  2002 ?        00:00:00 CROND
> www      14706     1  0  2002 ?        00:00:00 sh -c ping -c 1 install.lon-capawww      14707 14706  0  2002 ?        00:00:12 ping -c 1 install.lon-capa.org
> root     20636   841  0  2002 ?        00:00:00 CROND

> I first thought that this epidemic has to do with the /etc/cron.d/loncapa
> cron job. However, /usr/local/loncapa/bin/CHECKRPMS --cronmail 
> calls "ping -c1 -w10 ..." which should terminate properly, whereas the
> pings above were called without the -w flag and therefore hang.

Older versions of CHECKRPMS did not use the -w option.

> Does somebody know were those pings are coming from?

Older versions of CHECKRPMS.

> (the origin of the hangs comes from the fact that the pings did not go through
> the firewall - I changed this for now).
> 
> This brings me to something else: I do not want CHECKRPMS to contact
> ftp servers, I want it to look in /mnt/redhat as specified in the
> check-rpms.conf file. It seems that CHECKRPMS ignores the check-rpms.conf
> which I find rather undesirable. Is there a simple way of changing this
> (before I dive in and rewrite CHECKRPMS)?

CHECKRPMS is meant to be a highly global solution for LON-CAPA servers,
not a highly customizable one.  Note that install.lon-capa.org provides
an updates ftp mirror of not just redhat RPMs, but now also of
LON-CAPA-systemperl (and additional LON-CAPA specific RPMs in the
future).

At present, if you do not want to use CHECKRPMS, then please just
comment out the CHECKRPMS line inside /etc/cron.d/loncapa, and use
your own methods.

That said, CHECKRPMS could use some improvement.  For instance,
yes, I do think, in the future, the command-line should allow
some customization of what servers are contacted (and also
whether or not the check-rpms.conf file is used).

Regards,
Scott

> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
> ========================================================================
> Martin Siegert
> Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
> Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
> Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert@sfu.ca
> Canada  V5A 1S6
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-- 
Scott Harrison, sharrison@users.sourceforge.net