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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!ritcv!cci632!ccicpg!felix!chuck
From: chuck@felix.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Problems with 'mail'
Message-ID: <15177@felix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Dec-87 20:04:16 EST
Article-I.D.: felix.15177
Posted: Wed Dec  2 20:04:16 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 20:36:41 EST
References: <12684@felix.UUCP>
Sender: chuck@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: barry@adelie.adelie.com (Barry A. Burke)
Organization: Adelie Corporation, Cambridge MA
Lines: 27
Approved: zemon@felix.UUCP

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In article <12684@felix.UUCP> jeff@uhccux.UUCP (Jeffrey Blomberg) writes:
>We often encounter a situation where a user on our system manages to get
>the mail program into a CPU run state, and although the user drops their
>modem line the process remains on the system.  In cases like this, the
>sys admin must kill the process.  When the user gets their billing report,
>they are often surprised to see the cost....

I too have observed this, ever since the initial release of Ultrix.  I think
I have tracked this down to the "mail" command's improper handling of EOF!
That is, if you are at the mail command prompt (?), and then type a
Control-D (or something else generates a EOF), then mail will loop forever,
burning up CPU. [Note that dropping the modem line results in EOF on the
input device].

I suspect EOF because we run Untamo, which attempts to kill idle processies
by closing stdin and stdout for the process. I _beleive_ that mail handles
properly a SIGHUP.

Anybody else?

	barry
-- 
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