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".

224 responses total.

couldn't get to grex OR mnet all evening.  Very odd for both to be down at
the same time.  

It's a massive DoS experience.

I tried to telnet in Wednesday night:  No 311 in queue.  Is that common at
9 pm?

MADE_ON!grxup.

After Grex came back on line last night, could not delete read mail
in  pine for a while - that feature became active again later in my
connection. 

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you must be popular!

someone from denver on speakeasy.
I'd ask jeanne.

Telnetting to cyberspace.org fails due to some kind of DNS problem.
Telnetting to grex.org works.

When I tried to connect with PuTTY earlier, I got this:
Server refused to allocate pty
Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
mesg: I/O stream 2 improperly redirected
stty: TCGETS: Operation not supported on socket
stty: standard input: Operation not supported on socket
TERM: Undefined variable.
stty: standard input: Operation not supported on socket
mesg: I/O stream 2 improperly redirected

I edited for formatting, as there were only line feeds, no carrige
returns in the lines.

(ssh connections don't drop into the telnet queue.  you likely experienced
the condition of connecting via ssh without an available tty.  it's more
common if you try to connect via ssh during "busy" periods.)

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Speaking of sshd, it's still an antique version 1.

yeah, any chance of updating it?  My client keeps complaining.

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        Why bother?  Aren't we 100 days away from new Grex machine?

Considering that yet another security hole was just discovered in the
version of sendmail we're running, any security problems in ssh are
probably moot.

I don't think the new grex machine is going to be ready at any predictable
time, any more than the old one was.

I'm having a mysterious problem with e-mail.  I type "!mail"
to send mail.  I use Mail version 5.5 6/1/90, or so the system
tells me.
        Over the past month or so, I occasionally get a
block of random characters instead of the body of a message.
These e-mails are *not* failed attachments.  Instead, I
am receiving a screen or two of junk.  This happens with
respected e-mail senders like aol and umich.edu.  And
it only happens occasionally.
        Is this a Grex problem?

Hard to tell without further info.  Have you saved any of these messages?

Possibly they contain 8-bit characters which set your screen to an
alternate-character-set mode?  I've seen this happen with vt100 emulation in
Procomm.  But I don't know that they would set it back, so that probably isn't
it.

  Is the behavior reproducable?  (sp?)

  That is, does it happen consistently every time you display a certain
  message or is unpredictable?

There are a lot of viruses currently going around that look like garbage
because they use incorrectly formatted attachments that are meant to
automatically open in buggy versions of Outlook.  Some of them forge
'from' addresses from address books, so they might appear to come from a
legitimate source.  I get a couple of these a day.

I thought those were all Klez variations.

Maybe they are.  I haven't been keeping track.

Can anyone give us an 'official' explaination as to why Grex was down for so
long the other day?

read coop

UPS again.  STeve is looking into getting fresh batteries.

  BTW, "watch" has been reporting that "woot" is logged onto console
  for a couple of days now.  Perhaps it's just a ghost in wtmp
  (or wherever watch gets its info) but if not, even on console leaving
  a root user logged in isn't a particularly good idea..

RE#27 -- I don't want to.  Plus this is the Grex system problem item....;-)

Hi every one! Im new to grex so i have no idea what you are talking 
about.... im new to shells too so maybe some people can help me out? 
thanks.

  With a name like that, we expect you to be omniscient..

When I logged in:  mesg:  Unable to find your tty (ttyt0) in utmp file.
Might I have done something stupid to .cshrc or .login?  It all seems to work
anyway.  I think I set things to force vt100.

        I don't believe it's your startup file(s),
        and I'm glad it's here not . .
        that other Unix system.

        Maybe ttyt0 escaped to M-Net.

The system periodically "loses" a tty or two somehow.  When one gets
the message described by Sindi, it means you've connected to one of 
those "lost" ttys.   I had a similar tty tonight.  Tels won't work
on a "lost" tty; if this is a problem, just log out and log in again,
and hope you get a different tty.   I don't know of anything else 
which fails on a "lost" tty.

i don not now way telnet can not  fonction clarly..

I'm on the lost tty now. I've had this problem before.

I got the same message when I logged out and logged in again to a different
account, but today it is okay.  

Today grex lost my tty again, but to compensate yesterday it started letting
me save mail messages and things I print (P) with lynx again.

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