Re: cfservd under load - SplayTime quirks

[Jim Wight]

> The first thing I noticed was that despite the SplayTime, right at 25 min past
> the hour (when the cron job is scheduled), the server gets absolutely 
> pounded with clients. cfservd crashes within a few seconds, sometimes with
> no corefile and nothing logged, and sometimes with stuff like:

I reported the following in bug-cfengine on Nov 16:

  I don't know whether this came in at 2.1.11 - I haven't upgraded since
  2.1.8, and it wasn't there then - but in investigating 2.1.11 I notice
  that when cfexecd is started in daemon mode, when a run is scheduled in
  daemon mode, and when cron fires up cfexecd in non-daemon mode, cfagent
  immediately contacts the server (if update.conf is configured to do
  that) irrespective of any SplayTime settings in update.conf.

  It's only after 

  /var/cfengine/bin/cfagent -Q 
smtpserver,sysadm,fqhost,ipaddress,EmailMaxLines,EmailFrom,EmailTo -D 
from_cfexecd

  has been run that a normal (no arguments) cfagent run goes to sleep,
  obeying SplayTime.

  This is not good news for servers if all clients spring into action
  at the same time.

The 'cfagent -Q' run appears to be new, and the source of the problem.
Downgrade until it gets fixed.

Jim