help: silent failure on socket termination?

[Nick Belshaw]

I was wondering if this is a problem which can be fixed?

It is very upleasant and I have not found any references to similar.

I am running Python1.5.2 on Redhat 6.2

Using  the ayncore/asynchat modules to support customized communications
between
client and server  code-modules on the same or different machines I am
suffering an occasional silent failure of my server module when
terminating the Client during
conditions when the client-server link is busy.

9 times out of 10 there is no problem and the socket connection
terminates correctly
but the other time the server code simply exits without any error
message!!!????
No core dump, error messages or anything anywhere.....the program simply
exits....
I didn't know such a thing could happen !!!!!!!

I am presuming the failure is inside the socket module since the
asyncore.py routines seems
to log/flag all eventualities and so can not be seeing the problem.

Posting code here would really be impossible - too much is going on  :-(

My question is therefore, are there any known problems with socket.py or
am I looking at
a problem specific to my configuration such as a marginal Network card
or similar?

Unfortunately the problem only appeared on 'upgrading' from a Redhat6.0
configuration
which was running very stably for several years.....so hardware seems
unlikely.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Nick/Oxford