Problem with 'rsh' hanging

[heiser at sud509.ray.com]

Has anyone else experienced the following problem, and if so, what did you
do about it?

We have a series of scripts that run on a daily basis to do backups, copy
files, etc, etc,.  These scripts need to 'rsh' to each system in the
network in order to perform these tasks.  Fairly frequently, the scripts
"hang" attempting to reach one of the systems (not always the same
system).  It appears that when this happens, the remote system is
overloaded, so the "vfork" (I think that's what it's called) fails.
Instead of just timing out (which would be OK), the 'rsh' just hangs
there, which of course causes the entire script to stop in its tracks.  If
I manually kill off the hung rsh process, the script proceeds--but of
course that doesn't help when the script hangs at 3am...

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, what have you done about it?
Some way of making the rsh timeout after a period of time would at least
let the script run on the rest of the systems.

Pertinent info follows:

Network of about 60 systems;  mostly 386i/150's, but some 3/60's &
3/280's.  Running 4.0.1 on all 386i's and 3/60's, 4.0.3 on two of the
3/280's.

Side note:  Sometimes the above rsh processes return a message ^Atry again
(that's control-A!!!) which I can trap -- other times it just hangs as
previously described.  just hangs as previously described. 

Thanks in advance for any clues on this!

Bill Heiser

heiser at sud509.ray.com
Bill.Heiser at f101.n324.z1.fidonet.org