Ldirectord - unexpected crashes

[Volker Dormeyer]

Hi,

Just migrated another customer environment from some older
Ldirectord 1.77.2.6 to a more recent version 1.77.2.45.

I have a problem with the more recent Ldirectord 1.77.2.45. It crashes
unexpected without any message in the log. Sometimes this happens after a
few hours and sometimes a few weeks (2-3) after it has been started. Up to
now, I could not figure out the problem.

But I assume it must have something to do with the high real server
fluctuation within the environment. That means the real servers are taken
out of the load balancing because of hanging processes on the real servers
very often. After restart of these processes on the real servers,
ldirectord spotlessly put them back into the virtual server. What I can
see is, that ldirectord seems to crash, when there is some kind of a peak
in the fluctuation.

History:

  To check/monitor HTTPS connections, version 1.77.2.6 works by forking a
  child before checking the real servers via HTTPS. If I remember correctly,
  this was implemented to prevent a memory leak in the SSL library.

  Some time ago I proposed a patch [1] to replace this mechanism by plain
  LWP for HTTP and HTTPS connections. The patch was implemented, as far as
  I know.

    [1] http://lists.linux-ha.org/pipermail/linux-ha/2005-July/015176.html

The problem might have something to do with the use of LWP for HTTPS
instead of the old behaviour by forking a child, as well.

Any idea is appreciated. 

Thanks and regards,
Volker