[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#461181: avahi-daemon busy-loops and floods syslog on "Too many open files" error

[Henrik Langos]

Package: avahi-daemon
Version: 0.6.16-3etch1
Severity: normal

*** Please type your report below this line ***

If another process (like webalizer in my case) eats up all available file
descriptors then avahi-daemon goes into a busy loop on its accept() system 
call and floods the syslog. this results in 100% CPU usage (shared equally 
between syslog and avahi-daemon).

A better error handling possibly with a back-off delay is needed here.

Here's a sample output from the syslog:

Jan 17 08:01:10 localhost avahi-daemon[3336]: accept(): Too many open files
Jan 17 08:01:41 localhost last message repeated 740616 times
Jan 17 08:02:42 localhost last message repeated 1521753 times
Jan 17 08:03:43 localhost last message repeated 1500812 times
Jan 17 08:04:44 localhost last message repeated 1524410 times
Jan 17 08:05:45 localhost last message repeated 1502775 times
Jan 17 08:06:46 localhost last message repeated 1381572 times
Jan 17 08:07:47 localhost last message repeated 1501711 times
Jan 17 08:08:48 localhost last message repeated 1240818 times
Jan 17 08:09:49 localhost last message repeated 1518004 times
Jan 17 08:10:50 localhost last message repeated 1516795 times
Jan 17 08:11:51 localhost last message repeated 1515754 times
Jan 17 08:12:52 localhost last message repeated 1487226 times
Jan 17 08:13:53 localhost last message repeated 1301577 times
Jan 17 08:14:54 localhost last message repeated 1488510 times
Jan 17 08:15:55 localhost last message repeated 1488794 times
Jan 17 08:16:56 localhost last message repeated 1496280 times
Jan 17 08:17:01 localhost last message repeated 139276 times


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (200, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.21-2-686
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages avahi-daemon depends on:
ii  adduser                3.102             Add and remove users and groups
ii  dbus                   1.0.2-1           simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libavahi-common3       0.6.16-3etch1     Avahi common library
ii  libavahi-core4         0.6.16-3etch1     Avahi's embeddable mDNS/DNS-SD lib
ii  libc6                  2.3.6.ds1-13etch4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcap1                1:1.10-14         support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libdaemon0             0.10-1            lightweight C library for daemons
ii  libdbus-1-3            1.0.2-1           simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libexpat1              1.95.8-3.4        XML parsing C library - runtime li

Versions of packages avahi-daemon recommends:
ii  libnss-mdns                   0.9-0.2    NSS module for Multicast DNS name

-- no debconf information