Error 'Software caused connection abort' in arla 0.26 and 0.25

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

The last two releases of arla have had a new problem for me, despite
a number of past difficulties having disappeared.  If I have not
tried to access a file for some time, the first two or three
attempts to read it fail.  Here is an example of a grep which
failed the first four times:

     avl0 11:15:15> egrep meissen ssh_known_hosts
     egrep: ssh_known_hosts: Software caused connection abort
     avl0 11:15:22> egrep meissen ssh_known_hosts
     egrep: ssh_known_hosts: Software caused connection abort
     avl0 11:15:23> egrep meissen ssh_known_hosts
     egrep: ssh_known_hosts: Software caused connection abort
     avl0 11:15:24> egrep meissen ssh_known_hosts
     egrep: ssh_known_hosts: Software caused connection abort
     avl0 11:15:25> egrep meissen ssh_known_hosts
     meissen,meissen.mcc,meissen.mcc.ac.uk,130.88.203.42 1024...

As you see, it takes about 10 seconds to work properly, and
the first four times it fails with this funny error message.
The message is not from anywhere in arla directly.  The error
number ECONNABORTED is defined in errno.h.  This is on Linux
2.2.10 with arla 0.26, but also occured with 2.2.9 and 0.25.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc at mcc.ac.uk