Found in logs at the reported time ...

netrekd: hit maximum processes, connection closed

It seems we have a reaper leak in newstartd.

I was able to reproduce the symptom by connecting multiple observer
clients until the error appeared.

% ps ax|grep netrekd
  591 ?        S     11:06 ./netrekd
  588 ?        S    178:52 ./netrekd
% ps axl|grep 588|wc --lines
     22
% gdb newstartd 588
(gdb) p active
$1 = 88
(gdb) set active=22
(gdb) p active
$1 = 22
(gdb) quit

Symptom has gone away.

The code was designed to prevent a denial of service attack, but one
could almost argue that it is providing a means to deny service.

Continuum's newstartd.c has "#define REAPER_HANDLER".  I've restarted
netrekd with debug logging enabled.  This will help me find the
circumstances where the active count becomes corrupted.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/