Re: [mv] The Mysterious (Periodic) Disappearance of Minivend...

["kyle@invisio.com" <kyle@invisio.com>]

March and anyone else interested,

After scouring the mail archive, I came across what could be
(at least for me) the problem. It has to do with forking.

I have been running the minivend server for 30+ hours now
(before it would crash several times a day)
without a crash by starting it like:

minivend -D -serve

This does stop minivend from using fork to spawn new servers
so this is not a "fix" but while I work on the problem, it does keep
the store open. Fortunately it is the only domain on a fast new 
server so it is keeping up pretty well.

>From what I read, it looks like it is a problem with either the OS or
a perl library that has to do with USR1, USR2 which helps minivend
keep track of how many servers are running (and I assume that when
minivend gets hit hard, it looses track and ends up killing itself).

I am paying someone now to look over this problem and will report
back when we've figured out exactly where the problem is (and 
hopefully the solution)

Latter,
Kyle Cook (KC)

At 06:48 PM 10/22/99 -0500, you wrote:
>******    message to minivend-users from "kyle@invisio.com" 
><kyle@invisio.com>     ******
>
>What is the most in depth debug level for starting minivend
>with -D option?
>
>The reason is I started minivend like:
>
>minivend -D -serve >> logall.txt &
>
>And I want to be sure to grab everything possible from debug
>to see if I can pinpoint exactly where minivend is dying.
>
>I do have checkstat.sh running every 5 minutes and it does work,
>but I really want to find out why it is dying in the first place because
>I don't want it to die in the middle of a real time credit card purchase
>(IE customers card gets charged, but system crashes, so no record
>made in minivend)
>
>I am willing to pay, if someone is familiar with this type of problem,
>please send an email to me kyle@invisio.com with a quote to look
>into it.
>
>(Perl 5.005_03, Apache 1.3.9, FreeBSD3.2 and Minivend 3.12)
>
>Thanks,
>Kyle Cook (KC)
>
>
>
>At 11:07 AM 10/22/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>******    message to minivend-users from "kyle@invisio.com" 
>><kyle@invisio.com>     ******
>>
>>March,
>>
>>I am also having the exact same problem with a new install.
>>
>>I have minivend installed on one system and it has run for 6 months
>>with multiple catalogs without ever dying on its own 
>>(not including the occasional server reboot):
>>Perl 5.005_02, Apache 1.3.3, FreeBSD2.2.8 and Minivend 3.12
>>
>>
>>The new server is set up as follows:
>>Perl 5.005_03, Apache 1.3.9, FreeBSD3.2 and Minivend 3.12
>>with only 1 catalog (although it is a busy one)
>>and it dies randomly with no errors anywhere.
>>
>>There are no "watchdogs" killing it, as I own both servers and have root
>>access.
>>Can anyone shed some light?
>>
>>Kyle Cook (KC)
>>
>>At 07:16 PM 10/21/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>>******    message to minivend-users from March Rosenbluth
<march@uia.net>    
>>> ******
>>>
>>>
>>>Greetings!
>>>	
>>>	I've encountered a strange problem in my use of Minivend.  Periodically -- 
>>>ranging from an hour to several days -- Minivend just disappears.  A 
>>>restart shows it unable to find a running instance, giving the error that 
>>>tells you to try killing it to see if it stopped normally.  None of the 
>>>error logs show any comment at all -- the catalog specific one has two 
>>>errors in it which repeat over and over but happen frequently without 
>>>causing the problem and show no sign of being related.  Just in case, they 
>>>are as follows:
>>>
>>>193.149.76.206 bI3FeJSQ:193.149.76.206 - [21/October/1999:13:45:16 -0700] 
>>>simple /cgi-bin/simple/process Custom shipping field 'weight' doesn't 
>>>exist. Returning 0
>>>150.176.206.67 xujbI3Fe:150.176.206.67 - [21/October/1999:13:46:24 -0700] 
>>>simple /cgi-bin/simple/process Bad search column 'code'
>>>
>>>The minivend error log doesn't show a thing -- it shows the catalog being 
>>>started up, and then nothing until it's started again.  The apache error 
>>>log is currently completely blank.
>>>
>>>	We are using Perl 5.005, Apache 1.34, BSDI 4.01, and Minivend 3.14-3, and 
>>>are running only one catalog, which is based on the simple catalog.  I saw 
>>>in the archives that there was apparently a similar problem with earlier 
>>>versions of Minivend and BDSI together, but I couldn't find any solutions. 
>>> Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks very much!
>>>	
>>>	-- March
>>>-