Re: ftp -q 60 not working (well)

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> The hangs from the last two weeks look like this (in ps):

> pkgmastr  18764  0.0  0.0  33012   4748 ?       I    15Nov20    0:00.02 /usr/bin/ftp -q 60 -o tzinfo-2.0.3.gem https://rubygems.org/gems/tzinfo-2.0.3.gem                                                                                                                                                       pkgmastr  26119  0.0  0.0  30460   4752 ?       I     9Nov20    0:00.01 /usr/bin/ftp -q 60 -o rack-cache-1.12.1.gem https://rubygems.org/gems/rack-cache-1.12.1.gem

> I.e. there is a time limit of 60s but the job runs for two or three
> weeks without apparent progress. This looks like a bug in ftp(1), or?

According to ftp.n.o's manpage, -q is not a time limit on the transfer.
It is a limit on the time ftp will let the connection be "stalled",
whatever that means.

The code is unclear enough a quick skim doesn't tell me exactly what
"stalled" means; I would guess it means without any data being received
- or other progress being made, if expecting something other than data,
such as a data channel connection coming up.

It might be interesting to look at the underlying TCP traffic.  I
suspect something has caused it to slow to a crawl but not quite stop.
(I've seen such behaviour from TCP on a few occasions, though I haven't
understood any such occasion well enough to suggest a possible cause.)

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