mirror leaves ppp up on failure of mirror

[Jameson Burt <jameson@mnsinc.com>]

My nightly cron job mirrors a debian site.
Here is my cron job, which runs mirror if not already running,
then turns off ppp with poff.
   if [ -z `/sbin/pidof -x mirror` ]; then (pon; sleep 120;   /bin/mount       
/dev/sdb2 /mnt 2>/dev/null;   cd /mnt/mirrors;   ./run-mirror; poff) ;fi


Sometimes my program "./run-mirror" runs properly, sometimes not.  OFTEN, WHEN 
	run-mirror FAILS, IT HANGS, SO MY CRON SCRIPT NEVER GETS TO "poff".
Here is a "ps -auxw" (wrapped),
    USER   PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ   RSS  TT STAT  START   TIME COMMAND 
   root    997  0.0  0.2  3280   164  ?  S     Sep  5  0:00 mirror 
docs:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs package=docs    
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs -> /mnt/mi
   

Here is my file "run-mirror" (not wrapped in reality):
   nice --adjustment=-20     /usr/bin/mirror  -p debian                        
 ./mirror.defaults  1>./run-mirror_debian_`/bin/date
'+%b_%d_%Y_%I:%M%p' `   2>&1
#
   /usr/bin/mirror  -p docs             ./mirror.defaults 1>
./run-mirror_docs_`/bin/date '+%b_%d_%Y_%I:%M%p' `   2>&1

My mirror.defaults has entries for "debian" and for "docs", though I don't 
believe their contents matter here.


Here is an example output from run-mirror:
   bind: Cannot assign requested address at /usr/bin/../lib/mirror/ftp.pl line 
1273.
   package=debian   uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu:/pub/systems/linux/distributions/deb
ian ->   /mnt/mirrors/debian
   Got timestamp.txt 29
   Got ls-lR 1193924
   Got ls-lR.gz 163208
   Got doc/libc5-to-libc6-Mini-HOWTO.txt 4929
   Got doc/libc5-to-libc6-Mini-HOWTO.html 0
   Got doc/package-developer/virtual-package-names-list.text 4659
   Got doc/package-developer/libc6-migration.text 10982
   Got doc/package-developer/policy.ps.gz 80888
   Got doc/package-developer/policy.text.gz 27797
   Got bo-updates/shellutils_1.16-2b.diff.gz 7204
   
   timed out reading data!
   Failed to get bo-updates/shellutils_1.16-2b_i386.deb: 150 Opening BINARY    
    mode data connection for bo-updates/shellutils_1.16-2b_i386.deb (316650 
bytes).
   Failed to get file 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for     
bo-updates/shellutils_1.16-2b_i386.deb (316650 bytes).


Here, I believe the first "bind" line often does not occur, but the last three 
lines do, with "timed out ...", "Failed to get ...", "Failed to get ...".
My modem connection can fail, including its automatic redial, so I 
occasionally get "timed out reading data", but my real problem resides with 
"mirror" not terminating.
In the above instance, mirror evidently finished after the debian site, then 
hung with 0 bytes of output for the "docs" site (sunsite.unc.edu).
This left ppp running, since my script was hung in "mirror" for 2 days.  Since 
I use automatic redial, ppp had corrected itself probably in 15 minutes, but 
mirror never corrected itself and never terminated.

HOW CAN I GET A "timed out reading data" MIRROR PROGRAM TO ALWAYS TERMINATE 
RATHER THAN HANG?  Or, do some people write a different cron job to avoid this 
problem?

I run mirror 2.8-9 on debian 1.3.
Thanks for any help.

-- 
Jim Burt, NJ9L,		Fairfax, Virginia, USA
jameson@mnsinc.com	http://www.mnsinc.com/jameson

"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely 
valid human experience."      --William James, Varieties of Religious 
Experience



--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-user-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .