Question

I’ve recently experienced an error that may have taken down the whole web server. I’m relatively new to web programming (2 years experience… kinda). But I think I may have narrowed down what may have happened and want to ask if it’s possible. I think it is.

I have 2 classes that I keep in the App_Code directory. One handles logging. The other handles emails.

I had set up the logging class to send an email alert if there is an error log generated. Then I set up the email system to generate a log if an email is sent. Both reference the other class to do this.

Could this be an “infinite loop” scenario??

I may have induced a “broadcast storm” by doing this, taking down the whole server… which is a set of virtual servers. So, the question is kinda important 🙂

I did do some looking around, searching for “infinite loop class reference” but didn’t find anything but super technical writing.

Answer 1

That’s a definite possibility. Either set the email class to not log messages when sending log e-mails, or set the log class to not email log entries about sending e-mails (or both).