how to handle connection to server if server runs away?

[Bing D. <Bi...@ci...>]

Greetings all...

I have a client script to do routine mass search and update on our ldap
server. The script is set up to run at 1:30am in a crontab file and
usually it takes about 5 hours to finish its work.  All the script's
activities are recorded in a log file.

One day lately, I noticed in the log file that the script started at
the designated time (1:30am).  But an error message 'I/O Error
Connection reset by peer' on a search showed up at about 10:30am (about
10 hours later).

Was it because I did not set up any timelimit on 'new'ing a connection
and search()?

According to 'perldoc Net::LDAP', if not set explicitly, the default is
120 (I assume the unit is second) will be used as the value of timeout
in the following operation.

     $ld = new Net::LDAP($ldap_server,port => $ldap_port) || die "Can't
connect!!!";

Also timelimit can be set in search(). If not set, the default is no
limit.

Is it possible with Net::LDAP to specify reconnect attempts if the ldap
server goes away (with appropriate limits on time between attempts and
on the total number of attmepts to connect)? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bing