Hi All,

After a long and labor-intensive weekend moving from temporary housing into
our new home, I came to work to face an unexpected puzzle:

We're running FTP under 5.5 (FTPMON), and got the following error over the
weekend:

 85 :run ftpmon
 86
 90 FTP/XL Fatal Error SUN, MAR  4, 2001,  9:26 AM
 91 IPCCreate FTP call socket
 92 ADDRESS CURRENTLY IN USE BY ANOTHER SOCKET.  (SOCKERR 106)
 94
 95 END OF PROGRAM
 96 :if (!hpcierr > 0)
 97 *** EXPRESSION TRUE
 98 :  tellop FTP MONITOR had errors. Inspect #J!hpjobnum spoolfile.

Is this saying another process ("ADDRESS"??) is using the socket reserved
for FTP? And, more important, *who* and *how*? The previous FTPMON job
logged off at 10:24 PM on Saturday night, and this one didn't get started
until 9:26 AM on *Sunday* morning.

My guess is that the way we're stopping FTP is at least part of the problem.
We basically cause it to "crash", since part of the operators' procedure
involves stopping network services using NSCONTROL STOP and NETCONTROL STOP,
which aborts the FTPMON job with the following message:

595 New server created on SAT, MAR  3, 2001,  6:21 PM; on pin  1803.
596 FTP/XL Fatal Error SAT, MAR  3, 2001, 10:02 PM
597 ipcrecvcn
598 TRANSPORT IS GOING DOWN.  (SOCKERR 107)
600
601 END OF PROGRAM
602 :if (!hpcierr > 0)
603 *** EXPRESSION TRUE
604 :  tellop FTP MONITOR had errors. Inspect #J!hpjobnum spoolfile.

Is it possible the socket was still in use -- or rather, "owned" -- by an
orphaned process from the first FTPMON job, even though said job died some
11 hours earlier? (I had no trouble starting it up today, btw.)

Any help greatly appreciated, as always. :-)

TIA,
Patrick
(Moving with help from people at work gives
new meaning to the phrase "corporate move.")
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patrick Santucci
HP e3000 Systems Administrator
Cornerstone Consolidated Services Group, Inc.