This is teh item for ANNOUNCING the PROGRESS of teh M-B0x repairs
  
If you can desist from quibbling *here* and take quibbles to ANOTHER item,
teh this one will remain for the m-b0x staff (or staff of grex) to
announce/describe the continuing efforts made VOLUNTARILY on behalf
of the multitudinous guests of the m-b0x.
  
your patience and self-control will be appropriately rewarded.
  
thank you

27 responses total.

the Studebaker is being repaired .

#213 Karyl F. Stein(xenon313) on Mon Jul 15 09:22:05 1996:
 re#210: That message was dur to me running shutdown and then forgetting to
         change the nologin message when M-Net came back up.
 
 Update: I've gone through every directory except /guest and some of /usr
         deperming and removing various files.  This is just the first pass
         to get rid of some garbage and so I know how 2.1 is layed out.  The
         next step is to recompile most everything that does not come with
         2.1.  After that, /usr has to be backed up and repartitioned since
         I made a small judgement error when creating it, (luckly, it won't
         be a big hassle to repartition).  Finally, the system has to be
         configured, (mail, www, gopher, etc.), gone through again looking for
         holes, and tested.  Another backup will be made at that point and
         we should be ready to bring M-Net back up.  I will probably skip news
         and work on that after we go online again.  I imagine this will all
         take four days especially since I should have more to do at work this
         week.
 
         I added a second fan to the tower case since the hard drives inside
         it were getting quite toasty.  Also, the external case needs some
         better fans since that hard drive is really being cooked.  Unfor-
         tunately, that case uses smaller fans than anything I could find in
         the office and there is not really any room in there to "hack" it.

#220 Karyl F. Stein(xenon313) on Mon Jul 15 16:07:47 1996:
 Like I said above, I imagine M-Net will be online in four days, (Friday).
 There should be an update message that gets printed before you get booted
 when trying to logon, but I know a few people haven't seen it.  I''l make
 it so M-Net doesn't hang up after displaying the message and that might
 help.
 
 I let jfk on today so he can help compile and test stuff.  I also grabbed
 all the BSDI 2.1 patches.  I just need a decent term program for
 Win '95 to get them onto M-Net; one that doesn't puke every time you do
 an upload would be great ;).
 

#228 Karyl F. Stein(xenon313) on Tue Jul 16 17:34:58 1996:
 I just finished writing an addition to the login program so only certain
 groups and/or users may logon to certain lines, (assuming a configuration
 file exists for that line).  This is something M-Net had hacked into login
 before to keep guests from accessing patron lines and so forth.  At any
 rate, things have changed with the login program and a new method had to be
 written.  Problem is, I locked myself off of M-Net while testing.  Good news
 is it seems to work :).
 
 M-Net is still experiencing "freezes" on outbound Internet and inbound,
 offsite E-Mail connections.  Now, more than before, the problem seems not to
 be with M-Net, but our ISP.  If anyone has a router they can lend us for a
 couple hours to test, please let me know.  My number at work is (313)-913-
 3678.  Something like a Cisco 2501 would be great.  Anything with a sync
 and 10BaseT port that does PPP would work, though.

#230 Karyl F. Stein(xenon313) on Tue Jul 16 20:22:05 1996:
 All that needs to be done now is to configure some things like www and
 gopher.  I still have to backup and restore /usr, and do a full backup of
 the system, but it seems stable right now.  BBS trashed my participation
 files, so it might do that to everyone's.  I'm not sure why it did that this
 time and not last, so I'm hoping it's just due to some change I might have
 made to my account.

M-Net is up and running once more.

If M-Net is up and running, howcum it logged me off just now?

m-net is still down.

I think a better description of M-Net's status is "it depends."
When I tried dialing in at the top of the patron trunk hunt, I got
an endless ring.  When I tried dialing in at the top of the member
and guest trunk hunts, I was able to log in.  However, after M-Net
showed me the first line of "copyrights" for the BSDI software, it
hung up on me.
        Undaunted, I just telnetted to M-Net from Grex!  I was able
to log in.  Here was the display:


Ok: !telnet arbornet.org

Trying 206.84.193.2 ...
Connected to arbornet.org.
Escape character is '^]'.


Welcome to the Once and Future M-Net
BSDI BSD/OS 2.1 (m-net.arbornet.org) (ttyp6)

Enter  newuser  at the login prompt to create a new account (currently broken)
Enter  upgrade  at the login prompt to find out about increased access

login: dpc
Password:
Last login: Sat Jul 20 10:47:20 on ttyb5
Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

BSDI BSD/OS 2.1 Kernel #5: Thu Jul 18 19:26:10 EDT 1996

                    Welcome to M-Net now running BSDI 2.1

Update: M-Net has been down for the past week for an operating system up-
        grade, (July 9 - July 19).  Welcome back!

WARNING: The location of some files and the configuration of some programs
         has changed.  Also some programs may not work or behave as expected.
         E-Mail staff@m-net.arbornet.org with any questions or bug reports
         you may have.

STAFF: Heed the above warning and _be careful_ when making changes.  Watch
       E-Mail for updates.  E-Mail xenon313 with configuration questions.

Known Bugs: Inbound E-Mail is still not working.  Outbound Internet traffic
            may "freeze."  Gopher and news are not configured.  UUCP may not
            work correctly.  Party and watch do not work correctly.  Please be
            patient as these problems are fixed.  UUCP users, please send all
            error and bug reports to xenon313@m-net.arbornet.org.

You have mail.
.: Can't open /etc/profile.sh
Connection closed by foreign host.
!

        Soo.  The System is indeed up.  Known bugs are posted.  However,
M-Net was unable to open /etc/profile.sh (whatever that is), and logged
me off again.
        Ergo, there is a problem with the files that initially let
folks into the System.

I was on from about 8 to 10 this morning, in party, elm, bbs, and tel'ing.
Now we a-ring-a, no answer-a.

Craig and Karyl fixed the problem in #9.  The bbs script was pointing
to a nonexistent file.
        Craig says that Ameritech has fouled up our trunk hunt as a
result of the disconnection of some of the lines we weren't using.
This happened *despite* the fact that craig went over the hunt line-
by-line with Ameritech.
        The System is down now because craig is over at the NEW Center
installing new fans for the hard drives.

It would be nice if a trunk listing could be posted in this conference.

My comm program has ten guest lines starting at b1 when I know for a fact 
that there are not ten guest lines and they do not start at b1.

good announcements ...

I asked about a phonelist in the "long ago", draven... I was told it 
never gets updated and that no one had the time to do so - just send 
money ;-)

I'm not really expecting it.  Last I knew, craig had the new phone list, 
so it's probably in with the financial records, member list, and various 
other essential documents we won't be seeing again.

When I tried to logon this evening, M-net would let me log in, then
immediately dump me off.  So, I've got a suspicion it's down again.

might be the  member or patron stuff is not qutie correct yet ... dunno
for sure, but the guest lines seemed to be working.

        
        Down all day. Any clues why?

Yeah, and none of them good or sensible..

casper kicked it early evening ... should be up for a few hours ...

Xenon313 has suggested that perhaps 'cron' tasks might be responsible.. I
didn't realise this because I dunno what logs to look at, but apparently
the crashes are occuring at nearly the same time each day..

this is known as a "clew" - perhaps leading to an "undocumented unfeature"
;-)

Should be easy enough to check out.  The crontab's are stored in a
directory - perhaps /usr/spool/cron/crontabs, and there should also be a
cronlog, perhaps /var/log/cronlog, that may be helpful.

M-Net's inbound e-mail and outbound Telnet functions have been restored!
The problem?  I hear you cry.
        Bad wiring.  Xenon313 says:  "I had Ameritech run a line test today
and they found some bad wiring where our line hooks up to Coast to Coast
Net.  They fixed that and our connection has been working since."

Wow.  They actually accept SMTP connections now too.

   That is one of the most bizarre things I have ever heard.  I'm not
doubting it, but it sure is just plain *weird*.  Well, I'm really glag
that Karyl did the followup to get Ameritech to check the line!

It fits with my experience, though.  When I tried to send blocks of
text longer than about 2-3 lines to M-Net, my telnet connection would
lock up.  Single characters got through.  Noise from a bad connection
could cause large packets to fail while letting small ones work, and
I doubt that the protocol has any features to split packets to get
them through a noisy link.

My dad used to tell me "when fixing something, always look for the little
things first".  Guess he knew what he was talking about.

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