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".

123 responses total.

Someone named v1n64d0r has filled up /tmp with a directory called
wu-ftpd-sploit.v1n64d0r.

What does this mean?  I finished agora, typed "n" at the Ok: prompt, and
failed the security checkpoint?  It isn't April yet, folks.

Ok: n
Failed security checkpoint
No new items in pfc
No new items in consumers
No more conferences left

The next conference after agora on your .cflist is auction,
so your 'n' after finishing agora caused you to try to join
it.  I guess the auctioneers are still setting up the auction
conference, so it isn't open to the public yet.

Re 1:  I deleted that wu-ftpd junk from /tmp.

Re #2,3: Right, the auction is expected to open about April 1st.

re #5 
what a joke! ;)

        I am experiencing near 50% failure on getting connected to
the dial-in lines.  It hangs up on me.

Actually, the auction cf has been on my list continuously since last year.
First time I failed the security checkpoint.

Dial In.  Yeah, last week I had a lot of trouble dialing in.  Ended up
telnetting in from a friend's UM account a lot.  
For the techie detectives:  whenever I come in through the UM dial-in route,
it is ALWAYS because I can't get through Grex's dialins.  

Twice last week, the modem I was trying rang three times and then rolled to
the next modem.  Several times the two modems would whistle at each other,
then mine would declare that Grex  was not answering.  I only used 3451 as
the phone number last week.  

The auction conference only recently went "closed" again, in order to set up
the new auction season.

What modem are you using, Colleen?  ie have you tried dialing in with a
different modem or phone line?

nope, it's always the same modem, same phone, same settings.  I have a little
486 thinkpad that I use exclusively for email and grexing.  (mostly the same
thing).  Doesn't leave my desk, doesn't get plugged and unplugged, doesn't
do anything much except sometimes not get connected to grex.  

Its on a line with call waiting, disabled by dialing *70 before I dial grex.
My experience is that no matter how much I redial, if Grex isn't talking, it
isn't talking.  So I go away and try again another day.  On days that it
works, it works fine.  

I'm not getting kicked off; I'm just not getting hooked to into the modem that
does answer.  Today has been fine.

Maybe I could loan you an external 14.4 for a while, to see if it's your
modem.  The other possibility is your phone lines; dirty lines can vary with
the weather can cause all sorts of modem problems.

Ok, just now took three tries.  First time phone got answered, modems hummed,
whistled, and hissed static, then hung up.  Second time no hang up, but the
cursor blinked without welcoming me to Grex.  Third time a charm.

For the record, the net connection seems to have gone down around 11:20 am, 
judging from the party log.  I'm dialed direct.  (And it worked flawlessly.
 :)   )

(heh.  yeah, it seemed as if Grex was sending, but not receiving.  I
ended up "idling" out.)

The outside world is again connected.

"nslookup" is sitting apparently forever and not giving any output.
If there's some parameter it requires to work now, maybe nslookup
should be moved to nslookup.old and nslookup made into a script which
feeds the correct parameter to it.

Just now I tried to send mail.  I typed "!mail", and was rewarded with:

/tmp: write failed, file system is full

Mail was working an hour or so ago.  Could somebody please empty
the file system?  Thanx!

I had a strange telnet experience this afternoon.  I was in the queue, at
number 19, and the next number that showed up was 5.

(I've noticed some bottlenecks in the telnet queue also.)

I think sometimes that happens when a bunch of idle people get booted all at
once.

Re #18:  Maybe a terminal server crashed and a whole bunch of people
on the waiting list dropped from the queue all at once.

maybe grex's timeout is too short and people bring up 10
or 12 terminal windows at a time to hopefully not have to
wait in the queue again, if they accidently timeout. :)

Mail just stopped sending. (Pine).  First mail sent, then a few minutes
later two more would not send.  Timed out with some error message about
illegal instruction.  I will try the MAIL program instead.

MAIL sends mail (or at least it says it sent mail).

My problem is that I could not find an easy way to inquire about
Grex, Grex memberships, and Grex dues, in agora. There should be
a file somewhere that can be called up by just typing any of
dues, member*, Grex, and maybe just help, at an Ok: prompt.

(help member and help membership, don't help either)

        I guess !support is not intuitive?

Tim, it might not be, and aliasing the others to it wouldn't hurt.

We could alias "member" and "membership" to !support.  Dunno about help -
That gives you Picospan help, and it may not be possible to edit that. 
Anyone know?

Funny thing is, I used to know !support was for Grex info, but had
completely forgotten it. Could it be enabled without the bang? I
notice several other common commands don't require the bang, and
the bang itself is not intuitive. 

It is enabled without the bang.

I agree with aruba it would be a good idea to alias
member and membership. If someone has been on Grex 
for a few months and is curious, we want to catch
them the most likely places they might look for 
membership information.

Dialins being real finicky.  3451 connects but doesnt give me "Welcome to 
Grex".  3554 rings 3 times and rolls over to a line that doesn't answer. 
3000 doesn't connect at all.  Finally got here via 5041

Dialed every single number without being able to get one to answer and
connect.  Not even the pseudo connection with no welcome line.

grex.org and [grex.]cyberspace.org are all refusing telnet connections 
at this moment.  I'm obviously able to Backtalk instead...

I got one refusal from my desk in CA, and then I came in through my wccnet
account and it worked fine.

(Krj reports that inetd failed.  STeve kicked it, and it's working
OK now.  Grex was refusing telnet sessions, but accepted ssh.)

I've been having trouble with telnets all day.

I got two 'NO CARRIER' about 20 minutes ago but now got through by dialin.

Some of my inbound mail bounced today.

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