Terminated exit code 42

[Booboo]

What does "Terminated exit code 42" mean? This appears in the WinGate NAT log. It is associated with an outside machine connecting through WinGate to a mail server behind Wingate. Concurrently, the mail server reports "Unexpected socket closure" and "SMTP session abnormally terminated". I've set up Wingate to redirect the port to the mail server and have disabled timeouts, and disabled the Wingate SMTP server.

Thanks,
Brad

[Pascal]

Exit code 42 indicates that the ENS signalled the connection was terminated. It can be a normal closure (FIN sent) or a timeout.

How soon does it happen within the connection sequence? Is it after a certain amount of time everytime or does it happen randomly? Does it happen for every connection or only for some of them?

[Booboo]

Thanks Pascal,

It seems to happen with all or nearly all the connections. And it seems to happen at between 30 and 60 seconds after a message finishes being passed through. I know that there are more messages waiting, but they don't get through until the next cycle.

The remote mail server seems to open up between 5 and 9 connections, sending one or two messages through each connection (usually one), then things stop for 30 to 60 seconds, then the connections close with the "Terminated exit code 42" message in the log

I turned on the debug logging and also get the following four entries in the log:


11/03/04 14:22:56 Debug: NAT error message code FFE0B40B, context 1412 OutICMP=0, InICMP=0, OutUDP=87352, InUDP=403414, OutTCP=34128659, InTcp=450749313

11/03/04 14:22:56 Debug: NAT error message code FFE0B40B, context 1420 OutICMP=1, InICMP=2224, OutUDP=0, InUDP=0, OutTCP=0, InTcp=0

11/03/04 14:22:56 Debug: NAT error message code FFE0B40D, context 1426 Total locked memory in use is 190568

11/03/04 14:22:56 Debug: NAT error message code FFE0B40E, context 1433 Unknown Frames = 0, Status Queue Size = 128

Thanks for your help,
Brad

[Pascal]

Those aren't error messages; they're mislabelled. It's only informative statistics, so you can safely ignore them.

Do you see this problem from the same mail server consistently (And only / more regularly with that one than any others) ?

Also, which version of WinGate are you using?

[Booboo]

Thanks again Pascal,

We only allow the remote mail server at a specific IP to connect through our DSL router, so I don't know if it would happen more or less with other servers.

We are using Wingate version 5.2.3 (Build 901). I had upgraded to 6.0.1 but had trouble (different trouble) with it and went back to this one.

Cheers,
Brad

[Pascal]

Ah. See, here's what I was thinking - the remote mail server sounds as if it's getting into a position where it's sent one (sometimes two?) message(s) and then it is expecting a certain response from your server. It's not getting that response, so it sits there spinning it's heels for a while, which, after a certain time period, it times out and gives up, just closing the connection.

Your mail server sees that as the "Abnormal socket closure", which would be understandable - the other server thinks you've gone non-responsive, etc.

Not ruling out the fact that it's a WinGate problem, just tossing ideas around as I think about it.

[Booboo]

Pascal,

Well, that certainly makes sense. I'll attack that angle and let you know what I find.

Cheers,
Brad