4.0.3 login hangs

[HAMISH at waikato.ac.nz]

In article <9280 at brazos.Rice.edu>, "John_Lagrue.WGCERX"@xerox.com writes:
> rbd at lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu (roger davis) writes
> 
>>Our site has been experiencing a lot of problems with hanging logins on
>>Sun/4s running 4.0.3c. Symptoms are as follows:
>>
>>1) User enters login name.
>>2) System responds with 'Password:' prompt.
>>3) User enters password, and the system hangs indefinitely.
> 
> I've had this problem too, and it also happens on SunOS4.1.  What seems to
> happen is that the SparcStations' login hang if the server has to be
> rebooted. Sometimes it frees up after an attemped login has timed out, but
> usually I have to reboot the clients. It's a real pain in the *ss!

I had the same problem last week. It turned out that the process table was
full because of a cron job that was dying and not being removed.
Eventually the table would fill up, and a reboot would be necessary. The
only way I could gain access to it was  doing an rlogin from another
machine.

A reboot was necessary, as I wasn't going to go through and kill all those
jobs, and couldn't be bothered thinking about a script for it (I was in a
hurry).

BTW The machine was a SparcStation 1 using the generic 4.0.3 kernel. 

Hope this helps.

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