This item is for system announcements (new computer equipment on Grex, 
system upgrades, Grex meetings, etc.).  Personal announcements should go 
back in item 2; Grex system *problems* belong in the next item (#4). 

33 responses total.

why aren't there any system announcements?
are there ever? why have this item if there aren't?

fronttalk tells me "2 new of 1 response total.", that makes my head hurt.

Fronttalk sucks.

2 new of 1 response total.  that's pretty impressive.

Fronttalk doesn't seem to remember which stuff I've read when I use it
REMOTELY. That's why it sucks.

Fronttalk is beta software.  Someday I'll work on it some more.  Or maybe
some else will.  It's a perl program, after all.  You don't have to be a rocke
scientist.

BUT you Do have to be a DOCTOR.

This item is created every agora because we don't know when it will be needed.
Creating it before it is needed allows it to have the same number every time,
which makes it easy to find.

RE 4 I'm guessing, but maybe it counts response 0 as a new response?  It's
a rocke
scientist.

i have a picospan question.
i have a .cflist, with conferences i like participating in in it.  however,
the other day i joined agora, and now picospan does not register the other
conferences in the list.  for example, i type 'bbs', it dumps me into agora,
and 'n' gives me 'no more conferences left.'  when i type 'c list,'  picospan
has me edit my cflist, and agora is not in the list.  can someone flush my
stale yapp cache, please?  (oocq, i think)

(and thanks, btw)

Neither yapp, nor picospan, nor backtalk cache anything like this.  Your
.cflist looks fine.  I have no idea what might be going on.

full transcript:

---- snip
grex% cat .cflist 
c
m-net
math
coop
script
garage
mnut
grex% cat .cfonce 
# here is where you can put PicoSpan customization

# This line defines your pager.  Delete it if you want your text to scroll
# continuously; then use control-S and control-Q to pause and resume
scrolling.
define pager "less -dE -r"

# This line defines an extended Ok: prompt.  Delete it for just Ok:
define prompt "blah> " 

# This line defines an extended Respond or pass? prompt.  Delete it for
# just "Respond or pass?"
define rfpprompt "say something? "

# The next two lines enable word-wrapping in Picospan
define editor gate
set edalways

grex% bbs
PicoSpan T3.3a; designed by Marcus Watts
 copyright 1984 NETI; licensed by Unicon Inc.

Welcome to the Winter 2002/2003 Agora!
Your Host: Katie Geddes

New Users: Welcome to Grex!

This conference has been restarted.  Type "join fall" for the old version.


38 newresponse items and 3 brandnew items
First item 1, last 114
blah> c list
Type . to exit or :help
 c
 m-net
 math
 coop
 script
 garage
 mnut
>.
blah> n
No more conferences left
blah>

---- /snip

well, my understanding is that yapp stores user information in a private
directory (i.e. cflists).  is there such a thing with picospan?  it's pretty
clear that picospan has me edit my ~/.cflist when i c list.  are there any
per-user information stored somewhere deep in the heart of /bbs?

Yapp 3.0 does store some per-user information in a private directory.  That
is not done on Grex though.  All per-user information is in your home
directory.  It appears that it is not being read though.  It may have
something to do with your directory permissions (bbs runs as 'cfadm' not as
you, so it may not be able to read all files that you can read).  It may or
may not be interesting to see what happens when you run 'ft' instead of 'bbs'.

Hmm...  Styles' permissions for his home directory, .cflist, and .cfonce
look fine.  The first is world-searchable (drwx-----x) and the latter two
are world-readable (-rw-r--r--).

However, his conference participation files are readable only by styles
(-rw-------).  Maybe that's the problem?

Yeah - You have to have your home dir readable (not just x) for the .cfxxx
files to be used.

Re #17:  Really?  Logically it shouldn't be necessary.

That's what I had to do back when I was adjusting my permissions and Picospan
stopped working for me.

Strange.

I don't actually know what permissions Backtalk requires.  I think it
reads those files as the user, so cfadm permission isn't required, but
I'm not really sure.

Re #13:  Do you have a .cfdir?  If you do, the .cflist in your
home directory may be ignored.

You may have to set the directory permissions so that it can
be read/searched by 'cfadm'.

i think access() might display this kind of behavior...
i'll try it with a .cfdir in a bit and let you all know.
this does make sense since i changed my permissions recently.
for some reason, my umask was 0, and some loser was editing my files,
including putting some extra email addresses in my .forward (control
characters suggest that this was not a very talented user).

lol @umask 0 and conquences

okay, it's the group-executable bit that needs to be set.
thanks for the suggestions.

i think there's maybe some extra idled's running:

Wed Feb 26 21:10:00
This terminal has been idle 15 minutes. If it remains idle
for 5 more minutes it will be logged out by the system.



Wed Feb 26 21:10:00
This terminal has been idle 15 minutes. If it remains idle
for 5 more minutes it will be logged out by the system.



Wed Feb 26 21:10:00
This terminal has been idle 15 minutes. If it remains idle
for 5 more minutes it will be logged out by the system.



Wed Feb 26 21:10:01
This terminal has been idle 15 minutes. If it remains idle
for 5 more minutes it will be logged out by the system.


grex%

Yup; there are two running right now:

root     29839  0.0  0.0  100    0 ?  IW   Feb 20 52:33 idled
root      6540  0.0  0.0  100    0 ?  IW   Feb 18 74:34 idled

I've installed Backtalk 1.2.10 on Grex.  As usual, it contains quite a
few changes that aren't particularly noticable or relevant on Grex.  But
some are more interesting.

Abalone has had some more minor tuning up.  The biggest new thing is
that it now has a fairly decent spell checker.  You need to have a
Javascript-capable browser to be able to use the Abalone spell checker,
and it runs rather slowly on Grex.  Also since Grex runs ispell rather
than aspell, this lists of suggested correct spellings for each
mispelled word tend to be rather short.  I still want to work on this,
adding the ability to maintain private dictionaries.

Abalone's "Goto Conference..." and "View Response Range..." commands
should now give a pop-up box much faster.  Instead of doing an HTTP
request to Grex to generate the box, they are generated from Javascript.
There is some overhead in being ready to do this, so only these two
pop-up boxes are generated this way.  The rest still do an HTTP request
to Grex.

In HTML postings, things like conf:action and http://www.unixpapa.com
are automatically clickified, just as they are in plain text postings. 
They are not clickified if they are already inside a <A>..</A> tag.  You
can also enter things like <A HREF="conf:enigma">Enigma</A> and have
them work.  There have been many other small changes to the handling of
HTML.

Several bugs have also been fixed.  Probably new ones have been
introduced to take their place.  Let me know if you find any of the
latter.

There is a fundraiser in place to help pay for Grex's new computer.  See
item 165.

It should be "GO TO", janc, not "GOTO", you silly basic programmer.

unixpapa.com is my hero site.

Hello to everyone from russia! I'm new on the grex and interesting in
artifical intelligence... Help me with choosing confname for talking.

Privet Rossii.  You have already chosen a name which people will see if they
want to 'talk' (chat) with you - carnaily.  I don't understand the question.

Regarding junk mail (Ann Arbor Quarterly), which the sender claims is sent
out using a list of addresses from Advo, which insists that they took me off
their list, someone clever in Belleview just discovered that they have one
list which they use themselves at Advo, and another list sold by a branch of
Advo on the east coast, from which they apparently do not remove addresses
that are removed from the locally used list.  He will forward my addresses
to the east coast.  A case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand
is doing  (and also of the publisher of the junk mail not bothering to do
anything about people's requests to get off his list).  I forwarded the mail
from Advo to Webco Press (which prints the junk mail for Crown) and asked them
to forward it to Crown so that they will have the correct address to which
to send requests to remove names from the east coast Advo list.  What a
tangled web!  (Crown does not reply to phone calls or have an email address,
Webco tries to be helpful).  

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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss