Re: [exim-dev] 4.51 Transport Filter Timeout patch

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Ben M. Thomas
CC: exim-dev
Subject: Re: [exim-dev] 4.51 Transport Filter Timeout patch
On Wed, 4 May 2005, Ben M. Thomas wrote:

> The recent patch to correct the timeout issue with spamd does not work
> as expected. Since the transport filter has timed out, it sends a
> malformed or incomplete data stream. This patch kills of the child
> process and prevents checking of its exit status. This should prevent
> the transport filter timeout message from getting overwritten by the
> child's exit error.


In the 4.51 release (released yesterday) I put in something similar to
the patch (but with a default FAIL rather than DEFER, to match what
happens for a pipe process timeout). In my tests on Gentoo Linux, the
transport filter timeout message did not get overwritten.

However, I am sure that the behaviour is probably highly dependent on
the operating system, the pipe command, and on exactly the timing
characteristics of a particular case.

It is now possible for the transport to detect whether it was the
transport filter that timed out, or the pipe command itself. I suppose
that it should refrain from overwriting the error message if it knows
the transport filter timed out. I will think about this.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book:    http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book