[coyotos-dev] Timeouts (was Sleep for interval)

[Charles Landau]

At 11:56 AM -0400 10/5/07, Christopher Nelson wrote:
>there are places where it seems impossible to get away from 
>timeouts.  As an example, trying to connect to an unresponsive host. 
>You will never get a "fail" message.  At some point you have to stop 
>trying.

At some point you have to stop trying, but that point need not be 
defined by the passage of a pre-specified amount of time. Unless 
there is a reason for a specific timeout (the disk seek example), you 
should pass the responsibility to stop trying back up to your client, 
who might have better knowledge.

For example: a user types a command to transfer a file from a host 
that turns out to be unresponsive. The file transfer program has no 
clue how long to wait, so it should not timeout. When the user gets 
tired of waiting, he should be able to cancel the command. The user 
might know that certain hosts are more responsive than others.