[Xorp-hackers] xorp_fea crashes when interface is removed from OS at in-opportune time.

[Ben Greear]

Pavlin Radoslavov wrote:
> Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Ben Greear wrote:
>>     
>>> Seems xorp is very fragile when it comes to adding/deleting
>>> interfaces.  I think a lot of these errors should just be warnings,
>>> not asserts.
>>>       
>> And another related to the first:
>>     
>
> Please provide instructions how to replicate the asserts
> triggering.
> Those asserts are intentionally there to catch problems that might
> be somewhere else.
>   
I have a very complex set of apps driving xorp through xorpsh in an 
automated fashion,
while creating/deleting network interfaces.  I don't think I can give 
you an easy
way to reproduce it.  You *might* be able to cause it by unloading an 
ethernet driver
out from under xorp, but it could take more luck than that to hit the race.

However, you can imagine that at any time an interface may leave, and if it
leaves before Xorp notices, then you can get those crashes.  I'm all for 
having
errors in the logs, but allowing an external event to crash the router seems
like a bad idea.

Part of the automation in my test case is done by a third party, so I 
can't offer you that code,
but I *can* offer you a beta build of our tool which can at least create 
large virtual networks
of Xorp routers on a single machine.  Our tool can be scripted to create 
dynamic
changes, but it would not be easy to exactly duplicate the kinds of 
changes that were causing
this crash.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> 
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com