TCP connections stay in a closed state for 120 seconds according
to the RFC for TCP. This ensures that "rouge" packets still on the
network dont confuse your IP stack. After 120 seconds they should
clear out automatically. If you run a process that opens and closes
lots of tcp connections this could be a problem because by default
your limited to i believe 1024 simultaneos TCP connections. I ran into
the problem when i ran an rc5 keyserver and i did a huge dump of
keys. It would error out saying I dont have anymore connections
available. I'd have to wait a few mins for them to clear out.
Not sure if that number can be uped outside of a kernel recompile.
ulimit -a shows 1024 files max. i dont know if this number
is used for tcp connections too. (i doubt it).

If this isn't your problem then you may have a messed up system
or hardware problems.

Hope this helps.

Jason


At 01:32 PM 1/30/01 -0600, you wrote:
>I have a box that is not properly closing out it's tcp connections.  If I do
>a netstat --inet, it comes up with over 1700 connections in the state CLOSE.
>lsof shows all of these using up my file handles, and I am having trouble
>starting new processes on the box so I have to reboot it.
>
>Does anyone know how I can fix this?  I have 2 machines which are identical
>to this one and they don't have any problems.  
>
>Jay
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