Re: lib/46111: yplib will hang forever if no server can be found

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR lib/46111; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
To: Christos Zoulas <christos%zoulas.com@localhost>
Cc: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost, lib-bug-people%NetBSD.org@localhost, 
gnats-admin%NetBSD.org@localhost,
        netbsd-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Subject: Re: lib/46111: yplib will hang forever if no server can be found
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:07:26 +0100

 On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 01:40:45PM -0500, Christos Zoulas wrote:
 > On Feb 28,  4:20pm, Wolfgang.Stukenbrock%nagler-company.com@localhost 
 > (Wolfgang.Stukenbrock%nagler-company.com@localhost) wrote:
 > -- Subject: lib/46111: yplib will hang forever if no server can be found
 > 
 > |    The original yplib.c from Sun has a bug that it will hang forever
 > |    in some situations, if no yp-server can be found.
 > 
 > Yes, I think that this was done by design. Back when I was at school,
 > we had 1 yp server and many clients. When the server crashed, people
 > tended to reboot their workstations which would then come back up before
 > the server finished fsck, thus not finding any nis server. When ypbind
 > tried to start, they would hang and wait saying:
 > 
 >     'yp server not responding; still trying'
 > 
 > instead of letting it fail and proceeding. This behavior was useful,
 > because most of the user and group database was not stored locally,
 > so coming up multi-user without it would require a reboot anyway.
 
 I second this. Linux clients bail out after a while; after a power outage
 clients usually are at ypbind stage before the network is back up (especially
 when the server's UPS exhausted its batteries). This leaves the clients 
 multiusers but unusable, while the NetBSD clients just waits for a server
 to be there, and recover without manual intervention.
 
 -- 
 Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
      NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
 --