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".

227 responses total.

hmmm...telnet is not working but backtalk is-- strange

Ok, I finally got the library to snail mail the email that keeps getting
returned to them when they try to send me email hold notices or overdue
notices.

The main information seems to be
Bad address -- <CSM98  [hrm, cant seem to enter an "at" sign there, or
here, or even going into Pico].

anyway the line continues:
atsign cyberspace.org>

Error -- (MAIL FROM) 553 I can't accept mail from <AADL atsign
aadl.annarbor.lib.mi.us> via

[line cuts off.  too long for page width]

There was a message-ID: return.99114013113.114 atsign
aadl.anarbor.lib.mi.us

Anyway, I've got the piece of paper and the name of the person to call at
the library.  Is there a possibility that this is a site we block?  Is
there some possibility that the problem is on their end.  We've been
trying to do this for over a year, and all they've told me before is "Our
mail to you gets returned.  We cannot use the address you gave us."

Send that info. to  postmaster@cyberspace.org   They're the e-mail gurus on
Grex

ok, will do that

(But most of them read this item, don't they?)

        Of course not..

I dial in.  Why was I 'Waiting for a free port'?  (4 second wait)

The dial-ins are in a way connected to a quae system, last time I checked.
We dial-ins just don't hit it very often. :)

No, the dialins come into grex a completely separate way from telnet
sessions.

The dial-ins used to come into Grex separately from the telnet sessions.  A
few years ago we moved them to a terminal server, which answers the modem
calls and automatically sets up a telnet connectino to Grex.  The telnetd is
then supposed look at the source IP address on the telnet connections, and
bypass the queue if they're coming from the terminal server.  I'm not sure
why you would have gotten into the queue anyway.

  Occasionally you'll get the queue message but you're not really waiting
  in the queue in the usual (incoming telnet) sense..

Not a problem, but yesterday I got a busy signal while dialing in. I got
in after about 10 minutes, but I haven't has a busy in several years.

Today's MOTD is up to 16 lines.  A bit excessive, IMHO.  Maybe take down 
the message about Arborweb, or the one about NetHack/Elm

Agreed about Elm, but the arborweb thing is perpetual for some reason.

Last I heard, the reason the arborweb thing was up was because we paid for
one month of advertising there....several months ago, and we've still got the
ad up, so we've been recieving free advertising from them for several months
now.

(I might have totally misunderstood when we were talking about it at a walk
one morning, but I was pretty sure that was what was said...:)

I agree, and came to the same conclusion before reading this.  Will reduce
it now.

I don't think we ever paid for the ad on Arborweb, but my understanding is
that the terms of the ad on Arborweb require us to have an ad for them.  The
thing in the MOTD is our ad for them.

I think the reciprocality is fair enough. Keep it on. The MOTD seems to be
a bit smaller now thanks to the chucking of Jan's message.

I'd think that more terminal programs these days would have a screen buffer
so that long MOTD's aren't a problem. They aren't for me -- I have my .profile
script set up such that it displays the MOTD, which terminal I'm on, the
number of people waiting, a few lines of interest from the nethack high score
list, people in party, and the last ten lines from the party log. The only
thing that keeps me from needing to use that buffer often is the relative (but
tolerable) slowness of grex. So I'm happy with long or short MOTD's.

  (word use peeve:  there's no such word as "reciprocality",
                    use "reciprocity" instead..)

happy new year

Oops. Right. I usually use "reciprocity" anyway.

We keep getting disconnected, using Pine or bbs, from various computers,
and various phone lines, including telneted at the library.  Cannot redial,
just get 'if you want to make a call...'.  

I've still been having alot of problems dialing in...this time it took 3 trys
to get in...earlier it took 6.  All it does is hang....

Grex seems to be bogging down and moving awfully slowly for certain periods
today.  While I logged in, for instance.  

Pine almost invariably disconnects me while I am typing.  Is it necessary to
have flow control?  For some reason Jim removed it from Procomm.  I also
get disconnected in bbs while typing.

  There's nothing in the Pine program that could possibly disconnect you
  (unless you are specifically "exec"ing it from your login shell and it
  is executing prematurely for some reason.)

  Unless you're doing something odd *AND* there's a very strange problem
  with Pine, then the odds are very good (100:1 at least) that the source
  of your disconnect is not related to Pine at all..

6:58pm  up 15 days,  3:52,  48 users,  load average: 2.22, 1.70, 1.95

and seriously lagging...

There's something between UM & grex that is dropping packets.  I don't
think it's anything near grex; it appears to be either inside mich.net
or possibly verio.net.

There was also a problem earlier with a mail bomb, which STeve fixed.

The contents of my .cfonce are as follows:

# here is where you can put PicoSpan customization
set nosource
set edalways
define editor "gate"

# 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 "more"

# This line defines an extended Ok: prompt.  Delete it for just Ok:
define prompt "\nOk: "
set autosave

Yet when I enter a response andtype ':' for the editor, I do *not* get the
gate program, but instead the old line editor. Why, and what should be done
to fix it? (I'm thinking of making it "amin -n gate", so I would now like this
to work.)

When you enter a response, you're already *in* gate. When you use :, it loads
up the default from (I think) your .profile, which would be the line editor.

If you want to do "amin -n gate" change the line

   define editor "gate"

to

   define editor "amin -n gate"

If you want some editor other than the old line editor, say "pico",
then, do in your .login

   setenv EDITOR "pico"

or if you have a .profile instead of a .login, do

  EDITOR=pico; export EDITOR

Okay, I see what's going on now. There seem to be two different back-wrap
capable editors. There's the one that you get immediately on entering "r" at
respond or pass, and there's another one with a bunch of options at the bottom
of the screen. What's the other editor called? (Pine uses it on grex.)

The one Pine uses is called Pico.  Pine uses it everywhere; it and Pine are
dependent on each other, much like QBASIC and EDIT are in MS-DOS.

My participation file was destroyed because /a was full.

        Discovered an unusual (bug?) bit about the way input to party is
handled.  I can't think of a reason for it offhand, but it only affects very
fast typers.  When a stream of characters is sent to party before a prompt
with :nofirstchar set, the first character consistently shows up as the
*fifth* character, and all of the first four characters are shifted forward
one place.

        So, if you typed:

        Testing!
        
        You'd get:

        estiTng!

That happens to me too, anytime there's a huge amount of lag and I type in
more than one line before it gets in.

 11:20am  up 16 days, 20:15,  54 users,  load average: 2.57, 3.84, 3.86
User     tty       login@  idle   JCPU   PCPU  what
nemoc    ttyp7    31Dec99  8days      1         pine


"Idle-Reaper"?

Good question about that. I know that staff are immune from the idled, but
he's not in group 10. Interesting name, though. "Nemo omnae" is latin for
"nobody everyone".

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