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274 responses total.

This item has been linked from Agora 3 to Helpers 51.
Not that this is a system problem.  >8)

I got no carrier on the 9600 modem (5041, I think) earlier today.

Grex is leaving behind "ghost logins."  (A user that Grex still thinks 
is logged in, but really isn't, and when you check the processes for 
that TTY, there are NO processes.)  It usually stays on until logged out 
by the idlebuster program.  Earlier this morning, it happened with the 
login "root", and since the idlebuster does not kill root, it was logged 
in for quite a long time.  This also happened to me, and one other 
person (glitter) I know of today.

Also, when somebody tries to send a telegram to a "ghost" login, the 
`tel` program stops right before giving you the "MSG:" prompt, and it 
will not let you interrupt out of it, and you cannot use ^Z to suspend 
it.  (I was in party when it happened to me, so I could use ^Z to 
suspend party, and kill the telegram process.  But robh tried it when he 
was not in party, and it did not let him suspend, so he had to redial.)

I remember the telegram program doing this in the past, but I did not 
know the reason for it, but now I understand.

Just thought I'd bring this up.

That's nasty.  I'll put the telegram bug on my little list.  Well, OK, it's
a rather large list.

I just thought of something.  If the idlebuster kills the processes of 
an idle user, then that must not be what's causing the ghost users to 
log out, because they have *no* processes to be killed.....  I do not 
know what causes a "ghost" to stay online without any processes, nor do 
I know why they eventually log out.

Re 2 - ttyh0 (the modem connected to 761-5041) was stuck this
afternoon, I gave it a kick-start earlier, so it should work now.

The list showed by the who command is stored in the utmp file, I think. 
sometimes a user gets logged out without being wiped out from the utmp file.
They stay appearing to be logged in until somebody else logs in on that pty,
at which point their entry gets overwritten.

So it is not the idlebuster that clears it. Rather it is some normal 
user getting allocated that pty, which is free in reality, although wtmp 
doesn't think so.

Silly me. i meant utmp. wtmp is something else.

I'm on ttyh4 and there seems to be quite a bit of line noise.
You know, some random {~ and other funny characters get on my screen although
grex doesn't see them.

earlier today, one of the fast modems was ringing open.  I then telnetted in
and found that Grex had been up for a while.

Why , I can't use "Microsoft Exchange" to read my Grex mail?
Can I use another Mailer ,and which one ?

Grex doesn't support POP clients for mail reading.

That means you have to telnet to Grex and run a mail reader here. We 
have several (mail, elm, pine, mh).

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And, mh is very very unixy.  It is extremely fast, has lots and lots of
features, is very customizable, and very hard to figure out. :)
(I use it, and like it.)

Ah, a man of taste! I use mh too. (Actually, the basics of
composing, reading, and replying to mail with mh aren't
complicated at all. But it's sooooo configurable...)

No, but the basics dont' necessarily give anything particularly useful.  The
repl command, for example, is a pain in it's origional form, with no options.

Bah, I just say heck with this cryptic stuff... I head straight for 
Eudora Pro :)

But then aren't you kind of out of luck with Grex mail, since
Grex doesn't run a POP server?

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Yes, but it's my home system, not Grex. :)

Heh.  Well, actually, for the past month or so, when I initially
log in, after surviving the open modems and the frequent necessity to
send 2 "breaks" to get a prompt, I am told "No such loginid" and referred
to an http address which tells me all about how to fix my problem.
But really, all I need to do is log in *again* and everything is fine.
        Could someone please make it easier to log in the first time?
We are probably losing a lot of people.

Re #21: Silly me. That's exactly what I do too. But I use a
lesser-known POP client rather than Eudora.

David:  I would guess that your problem is that one of your breaks or some
other control code is getting prepended to your login. (You can't see control
codes.  They arn't displayed) So, I would suggest hitting enter at the first
login prompt, rather than entering the userid, and entering the userid at the
second prompt, and then coming back here and reporting the outcome.   I'd
guess that the problem is with your terminal's break, rather than Grex.
(Maybe... :)

the problem is with Grex

   Dave, hit a bunch of backsapces before you first log in--that will
clear whatver cruft is in the input buffer, making it impossible for
you to first log in.

The problem that you're seeing here is that as your modem and Grex's modem
are negotiating the connection, some line noise gets passed along to Grex,
which Grex sees as the first part of what you type into athe login prompt.
It happens to me probably half the time when I use use the dial up modems
(which I don't do very often).

OK, thanx!  I would never have thought of backspacing *before* logging
in...
        Also, about an hour ago I got a *new* error:  Grex took
my loginid, but when I hit a <return> to bring up the password
prompt, Grex hung and I hung up.
        BTW, why don't I get similar line-noise-prepending with
M-Net?

I am having a problem with "ping".  Sometimes I can ping from
Grex by typing "!ping blahblah" and everything is fine.  At other
times (such as a few minutes ago), I am curtly informed
Can't execute "ping"!  What's the story here?  Is ping being
permitted and de-permitted at pseudo-random?  

Or you're getting added/removed to/from the internet group at pseudo-random...

Soryy, my smily ( :)  ) was on a new line, and so got interpreted as a
command, and I'd already sent an EOF... Consider the previous response
smilied.

-r-sr-x---    1 woot     staff       24576 Apr 17  1996  /usr/local/bin/ping

Hmm... Looks like ping is permitted only to root & staff. (I forget
why we did that.) If Dave was able to execute it recently, it must
have been changed recently. Dunno why.

I'm telnetting to Grex from ITD (UM) via Compuserve from Florida. I get
full vt100 emulation on ITD, but no reverse video or arrow keys here. I
also cannot connect directly to Grex via Compuserve. 

I'm also telnetted from ITD at this moment (via dialup to UM) and everything
is fine for me.  Merely data.

Someone entered an item in coop saying that ttyh4 was consistently giving him
upper case mode.  It will probably be discussed more there, but I figured I'd
mention it, for people who read system problems but not co-oop.

Rane's problems undoubtedly started with his compuserve telnet client, not
anything at ITD. Telnet propagates your terminal type to each system. If it
is not good to start with, it can be a problem. I wonder what terminal type
ITD thinks you have when you telnet into there from Compuserve, Rane.

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It turns out ITD doesn't know my terminal type wither...its a Compuserve
shortcoming. I am not using their latest software. I guess I will just have
to deal with having no working arrow keys.

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