Re: CPSR #8: identd Denial of Service

J. Joseph Max Katz (jkatz@CPIO.ORG)
Mon, 04 Aug 1997 10:55:59 -0500

Howdy!

This occurs when ident is being called from inetd-- with ANY "-w" time
alotted. The OpenBSD default is -w60 or -w120, I tested it at -w40 and
other settings.

-Jon

On Tue, 5 Aug 1997, Alan Brown wrote:
:At 09:19 4/08/97 -0500, you wrote:
:>Problem:
:>A massive amount of ident requests causes the identd daemon to "spin"
:>because the daemon does not correctly close the socket from the host
:>that issues a request. This is due to a poorly implemented incantation
:>of wait(). The improper code perpetuates the identd process and allows
:>the process to hang, slowing system performance considerably. On average,
:>2-3 spinning processes slow the system noticeably-- 10-15 make the system
:>unusable. Bear in mind that this is all based on the speed of the system
:>and the above numbers hold true for machines like a p5/100 with 32M of RAM.
:>Simply "kill -9 (ident's PIDs)" fixes the problem if it occurs.
:
:Does this still apply when identd is called from inetd.conf wait -w -t120
:or run in daemon mode?
:
:AB
:
:
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