This item is for system problems.  If something on Grex isn't working 
right (line noise on a modem, weird behavior from a program, etc.), 
this is the place to announce it.  Except for security holes.  If you 
find a hole in system security, mail information about it to "staff".

91 responses total.

list

/tmp is full

I couldn't dial in on any of the five phone numbers I tried this
afternoon.

Not so much a problem, as an observation of "newuser".  Compare this:

The only answer that I need to create your account is your name; ...
Just a reminder, please try to use both upper- and lower-case for text
input; it's much more readable!

Enter your FULL name? Denise M. Anderson
Sorry -- no periods allowed in name.
Try again.

with this:

Now, you need to pick a "login-id". ... This is the name you will be known
by, NOT your password (that comes later)!  A few examples:

        denise  Denise M. Anderson
        bubbles Tom Digby

It's sort of a tease to show a user with a middle initial <period> when 
you're not allowed to enter such a full name...

I have a period in my full name. 

that's because you're special

Yeah and pretentious too. I mean I *could* use my first name but instead 
choose to be special and different and use my middle name which has an 
added E just to be really pretentious. la la la la la la. 

Yeah, well, what CAN you do?

My brother was given the middle name M.  (Em period)

Well, I had an uncle J T (and I'm not sure about periods).

Could always change once inside, anyway.

Recently I've noticed this phenomenon:  On certain e-mail messages appearing
in my grex inbox which are mime-encoded to have "flat" text in the first
section and html-encoded in the second section (pretty much the first stuff
regurgitated), such messages are not forwarded or received at my forwarding
inbox.  If I save the message to a file, and e-mail it explicitly, the same
thing occurs (e-mail not sent/received).  If I strip off the second html-
encoded section, then the e-mail is sent/received OK.  Since I'm not given
any bounce message to my grex inbox, I suspect the problem may be at the
receiving system.  But I'm not sure, so I'll ask:  Would grex have any problem
forwarding/sending an e-mail with html encoding?  If not, why would a
receiving system refuse delivery of or discard such a message?

Grex won't care if you get multi-part mime encoded mail.  It's possible
your receiving system has been configured to silently discard them;
certainly there's a lot of spam that comes in that format.  We're not
likely to ever do so here on grex, because there's also lots of
legitimate mail that comes in this format (and it seems that recent
versions of mailers for AOL.COM and others won't let you reliably turn
this "feature" off.)  Possibly Ford feels differently.

 When I logged in just now, it said "6 failures since last login." This
wasn't me...is someone trying to log in as me?

The network connection crashed at about 01:45.

I tend to do that to your sister from time to time....but once I realize what
I've done, I'll email her to let her know. :)
(why in hell I try to log in as Meg I have no idea....you'd think that I'd
have had this whole thing down by now....)

Well yes, one would think that Meg... ;)

Re 16: You crash Ken's sister?!! ;-)

The net connection is hosed.

does that explain this? 

Waiting for a free port (? for help)
...8
...7
...5
...4
...3
Jul 14 19:48 Jul 14 19:48 27357 -1 27294 166.90.237.254 LOST HEAD
...2
...1
Jul 14 19:49 Jul 14 19:49 27359 -1 27330 32.101.160.207 LOST HEAD

Grex central timekeeping.  At the beep, the time is
 7:54PM on Saturday, 14 July 2001


"Lost head???"

It might. But I just get a silent connection. Makes contact but just sits
there.

"Lost head" means the process at the head of the waitlist queue somehow
"disappeared".

I have been unable to dial in since last night.  Rings 6 or 7 times and
then hangs up.  Or does not ring at all or give any message and hangs up.

Hmmm...last night this was because Grex was shut down and I had the modems
turned off.  But I did turn them back on, so theoretically they should be
working.  Did I screw something up?

This time I dialed and it rang and eventually hung up, but when I dialed again
it rang four times and then connected.  Maybe one modem is still turned off?

I've been getting that alot....where it dials, and then partial connects, then
hangs up, but I get through on the second try fine.

There's a couple new bad lines.  Must remember to call... must remember to
call.

I did some rewiring last time I was in the pumpkin so that I can turn off all
modems with one switch, so they are either all off or all on.  I think I'm
the only staff member who turns the modems off while working on things.  It's
bad enough spending six hours in that little room without having modems
beeping and blatting at you as people fail to connect.  The dark side is that
sometimes I forget to power them all back on when I leave, but I've been good
lately.

I really should make it easier to set the modem motd, since it's much more
informative than open ringing.

The dead modem lines have been fixed.

But we can't dialin now.
(sorry, put it in the wrong item last time)

I haven't been able to dial in or telnet in all day.  (When I dial in, 
the terminal server answers, but apparently can't connect to Grex, 
because it hangs up after a few seconds.)

Also, the MySQL daemon is apparently down.

I think our install of mysql is definately broken.  Maybe I'll try to
see if PostgreSQL works any better on this system.

Grex stopped hanging up on us some time early Thursday evening and this
morning connected and stayed connected on the first try.  
Thanks for whoever fixed the problem.

It did work last night, but right now I can't dial in or telnet in.  
Same problem as described in #32.  I think this is what it looks like 
when the telnet deamon dies?

It worked first try for me just now.  

inetd had died a couple times in the last day, causing the telnet/modem
problems.

I am afraid there is still a problem, as of about 10:30 this morning.
I dialed in, got the "It may take a few seconds to connect" message,
then Grex hung up.  I dialed again; same story.  Now I am (obviously)
on the system, but I have no idea what will happen if I log off
and then try to log on again.
        This same situation happened yesterday, 7/19.  When I couldn't
dial in, I logged onto M-Net and tried to telnet to Grex.  Connection
refused by Grex.
        I really hope this new problem can be fixed!  Thanx for
everyone's efforts.

Oop!  One more problem.  While I was on a few minutes ago,
I tried to lynx out - to yahoo, hardly a problem site.  Grex
said it was looking up www.yahoo.com, and then nothing.
It hung.  

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