MX - FTP failures causing resources (inodes) to be exhausted

[freddie]

As mentioned in earlier threads - problems with FTP stopping updating files (not all of them, just some), which now appears to be a trigger for exhaustion of system resources.

Attached is the FTP log and the appropriate diags file. It looks like the problems started overnight last night, and the exhaustion of resources occurred shortly afterwards (around 0300?).

ftplog.zip

mxdiags.zip

[steve]

I get occasional ftp timeouts, and recently there was a problem with my phone line which caused my internet connection to be very poor, resulting in lots of timeouts, but I have never had the same resource problems (on my Raspberry Pi) that you are having.

Perhaps you could investigate the reasons for you having quite so many timeouts - it seems to be almost permanent, and consider increasing your system limits.

[steve]

You could try replacing the ftp client dll with the one in the attached zip, it's later than the one included win MX build 3036 and may have some bug fixes. I think it should work with build 3036, but keep the original one just in case you have to replace it.

I'll have a look to see if there's anything I can do to make sure files are closed after a timeout.

[freddie]

Perhaps you could investigate the reasons for you having quite so many timeouts - it seems to be almost permanent

When I look at my systems when the "timeout" stage is reached, I have often seen the scenario where the file that times out is zero bytes long on the destination system. Deleting this zero-length file sometimes causes the FTP updates to recommence. This doesn't happen every time, though, which suggests to me that there may be more than one reason behind the timeouts.
Regarding the timeouts - I have a fibre internet connection, with no data limits. The destination server has no data limits either, so we can rule out ISP or hosting companies using some sort of control. I do very occasionally get timeouts on the IP address checking function on my home server (which triggers DNS updates if there is a change in public IP) so I know the connection isn't completely perfect.

consider increasing your system limits.

I'm reluctant to do this as (a) you don't have a problem, and (b) MX is the only active service on the host.

You could try replacing the ftp client dll with the one in the attached zip

I will try that, thank you. It may be a week or so before I get a recurrence of the problem (last occurrence was on 11/02/16).
Thanks again for the swift response.

[freddie]

Not sure if it is related but I am seeing a lot of these log messages in MXdiags:

Code: Select all

2016-02-16 20:48:09.550 Error uploading dailytemp.json to /var/www/weather/dailytemp.json : Failed to get the EPSV port from: 5529

[steve]

I don't know what the error message means, I suppose it could be the result of another timeout.

I've changed my exception handling code slightly, it might help ensure that files aren't left open when a timeout occurs.

[freddie]

I don't know what the error message means

After 21000 instances of this error in 36 hours I have re-instated the original FTP dll. The errors have now stopped.
Also - and this may be coincidental - my web site was getting badly behind with its updates. It is now up-to-date again.

FWIW I haven't seen any errors in the FTP server log on the website.