i386/55908: perl process stuck in pipewr (no pipe being written)

[rajeeva at research.bell-labs.com]

>Number:         55908
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       perl process stuck in pipewr (no pipe being written)
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Aug 23 16:10:09 PDT 2003
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Rajeev Agrawala
>Release:        FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
>Environment:
jail
System: FreeBSD rusty.research.bell-labs.com 5.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE #0: Thu Aug 21 15:23:18 EDT 2003 root at iron.research.bell-labs.com:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/IPFW i386


	
>Description:
	
	I am using libmilter api of sendmail to scan the incoming email.
	The package is home grown. It works fine on a system running
	freebsd-4.7-RELEASE. However on freebsd-5.1, every so
	often some of the perl process created by the milter are left
	in pipewr state. There is no process created by them that
	I can see. Truss on the process just hangs. Sendmail eventually
	times out on these mail and does a tempfail. but these process are
	stuck on the system forever and the number keeps on growing.
>How-To-Repeat:
	
>Fix:

	
	The only fix I have at this point is to kill these processes
	periodically.


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: