Runaway Memory in ipop3d on Dual-Processor XEON.

[jjudeb]

I'm trying to configure a
dual-processor, 2.4GHz Xeon box as an
email server, running Postfix et
al. under Mandrake 9.2

I'm having an odd problem with two
applications, ipop3d and imapd.  During
login negotiation, the daemon starts
allocating as much memory as it can,
until system limits are reached.
Initially, there were no limits, and
ipop3d ran up over a gigabyte of memory.

I tried running the ipop3d binary from
Mandrake 9.1 with the same results.  I
also tried upgrading to the Mandrake
Cooker version of ipop3d, with no
improvement.  This makes me think that
the problem is glibc related.

I was able to run ipop3d interactively
under gdb.  When it started consuming
memory, I killed the process and got the
following trace:

        # gdb /usr/sbin/ipop3d
        GNU gdb 5.3-25mdk (Mandrake Linux)
        Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
        GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and 
you are
        welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain 
conditions.
        Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
        There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for 
details.
        This GDB was configured as "i586-mandrake-linux-gnu"...(no debugging 
symbols found)...
        (gdb) r
        Starting program: /usr/sbin/ipop3d 
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        +OK POP3 lxsrv2.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca v2003.83mdk server ready
        user testuser
        +OK User name accepted, password please
        pass XXXXXXXX
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
        (no debugging symbols found)...
        Program received signal SIGTERM, Terminated.
        0x4010a862 in socket () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        (gdb) where
        #0  0x4010a862 in socket () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        #1  0x40129b6b in clntudp_bufcreate () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        #2  0x40129c84 in clntudp_create () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        #3  0x4017d865 in yp_update () from /lib/libnsl.so.1
        #4  0x4017db15 in yp_update () from /lib/libnsl.so.1
        #5  0x4017c96e in yp_match () from /lib/libnsl.so.1
        #6  0x4001b896 in _nss_nis_getpwnam_r () from /lib/libnss_nis.so.2
        #7  0x400d9195 in getpwnam_r () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        #8  0x400d8bef in getpwnam () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        #9  0x080518da in responder ()
        #10 0x08051224 in responder ()
        #11 0x0805100a in responder ()
        #12 0x0804ce90 in trmint ()
        #13 0x0804c2ea in strcpy ()
        #14 0x40044c57 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
        (gdb)


This indicates a problem in getpwnam and
the NIS routines.  There other programs
(e.g. ftpd) which call getpwnam, but
which are not affected by this problem.

The obvious solution is to install some
other pop3 daemon, but I am concerned
that there are undiscovered problems
lurking in other programs.

Does anybody have any ideas about what
might be causing the wild memory usage
problems?


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