[Info-vax] TCPIP tying up system

[John Wallace]

On Nov 28, 4:22 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> John Wallace wrote:
> > While we await the crash dump info, would it be appropriate, for the
> > benefit of other readers who may one day find themselves in a similar
> > situation where a crash dump provides answers rather than the present
> > guesswork and speculation,
>
> Excuse me ?
>
> Why a crash dump because you CPU reaches 100% and you can't issue
> commands because thge TCPIP processes that consume CPU have higher
> priority than normal interactivce processes ?
>
> There is no "crash" here, just piss poor implementation of TCPIP
> Services which grants itself too high a priority and will bog down a system.
>
> Once the attack is ended, the system returns to normal. Teling people to
>  get a crash dump on VMS like that is like asking Windows users to ALT
> CTRL DEL their system and re-install Windows because their ADSL modem is
> not performing well.

Oh dearie me JF.

Even Windows takes crash dumps, although it's usually pointless
because finding someone to analyze them is nigh on impossible.

The point of taking a crash dump in cases like this (either on Windows
or VMS) is to preserve as much information as possible about the state
of the system at the time of the problem.

If a crash dump had been taken, some of the questions that have been
asked here but not answered here could actually be answered quickly
and definitively, in order to properly identify (and isolate) the
problem.

Someone with crash dump analysis expertise can in principle make a
whole lot more progress looking at the dump than a gaggle of people
guessing the answers to questions that have been asked but not
definitively answered.

It's not difficult to take the dump, but it does require a little tiny
bit of forethought and advance planning. And then it requires someone
with a CLUE to look at it. There are people with a clue around here;
going back a long time, I used to look at crash dumps a bit too but
it's all gone now.

I'm not sure how that relates in any way to "fixing" Windows by
reinstalling it. I don't remember suggesting re-installing VMS, or
even suggesting rebooting - it was Philip who chose to reboot, and
Philip could have chosen (at that time) to take a crash dump as well,
hence Roy's question (and my followup).

If any given problem recurs (and it seems likely that this one will),
it is sometimes worth forcing a crash dump in order to gather some
usable evidence for later analysis, especially if the customer's
chosen "fix it" is a reboot anyway. But the customer needs the
information on how to actually take a crash dump, hence my earlier
post.