Help! TOO MANYlocalhost:loopback connections, slow performance.

[Alexander Gottwald]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, goodwill wrote:

> Hi, I am using Xwin to access my linux machine KDE over a SSH tunnel.
> I ran into a interesting problem.
> Xwin seems to open HUGE amounts of localhost:loopback on many consecutive 
> ports (seem liek the whole tempt port range and more) and I mean like hundreds of
> these loopback connections.
> 
> They actually look very strange.
> there are hundreds of these connections doing this
> localhost:4818 connecting to localhost:4819
> localhost:4819 connecting to localhost:4820
> localhost:4820 connecting to localhost:4821
> .... and so on.
> basically its like they are playing "call the next port" game.
> 
> So my firewall (Agnitium Outpost Pro 2.1.xxx starts to lag my Windows comp.
> Its configured to allow xwin thru, in fact everything necessary is in the
> trusted zone, so it connects and works (lagging though). When I stop the
> firewall everything is ok.
> 
> After perusing the cygwin/x mailing lists, I could not find much to help me, 
> short of comments, to remove the firewall.
> Since it is not an option (no way should anyone be running windows with out a 
> firewall even if they are behind a router already like I am).
> 
> Why in the world dow xwin need to open so MANY loopback connections 
> in such a way.  
> Is there anyway to fix this?

It is the way the unix system call "select" is implemented in cygwin. But some
personal firewalls change the semantics how network connections are handled and
the old and unused connection dont get closed. 

There is nothing we can do about it. You could try a different firewall (except
ZoneAlarm 5 which is also known to cause problems) and check if the problem is 
not present.  

bye
	ago
-- 
 Alexander.Gottwald@s1999.tu-chemnitz.de 
 http://www.gotti.org           ICQ: 126018723