Grex Helpers Conference

Item 136: Grex System Problems - Fall 2004

Entered by i on Thu Sep 23 01:59:58 2004:

77 new of 109 responses total.

#33 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Oct 8 02:44:03 2004:

How so, twenex?

#34 of 109 by twenex on Fri Oct 8 11:29:49 2004:

Despite the presence of a long and correctly formatted .cflist, the command
"next" in "bbs" returns the messages "no more conferences left". No
bbs configuration files in my home directory have been modified since the last
time the command "next" worked.

#35 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Oct 8 11:49:03 2004:

Is that every time, or just after you've used the "next" command to go through
the list?

#36 of 109 by twenex on Fri Oct 8 11:50:20 2004:

Every time I use the "next" command.

#37 of 109 by scott on Fri Oct 8 12:23:45 2004:

Any recent changes to permissions?

#38 of 109 by twenex on Fri Oct 8 12:50:36 2004:

Only to the directory ~twenex, whose permissions have recently been changed
and then changed back again.

#39 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Oct 8 12:57:53 2004:

Ah.  I think you have to give "r-x" to everyone, to enable picospan to
find and read your .cflist file.

That's largely why I use a ~/Private and ~/Public structure. :)

#40 of 109 by twenex on Fri Oct 8 13:03:08 2004:

The permissions were the problem. The permissions need to be at least 750,
or rwxr-x---. I had inadvertently changed them "back" to 740, no "x"
permission for the group.

Thanks.

#41 of 109 by keesan on Mon Oct 11 20:28:11 2004:

/tmp is full, cannot write to file.

#42 of 109 by gelinas on Tue Oct 12 04:22:30 2004:

Fixed.  Thank you for mentioning it.

#43 of 109 by mfp on Tue Oct 12 04:25:24 2004:

This response has been erased.


#44 of 109 by naftee on Tue Oct 12 06:39:31 2004:

Thanks gelinas!

#45 of 109 by katie on Tue Oct 12 12:48:50 2004:

Still a problem...I can't read mail.

#46 of 109 by bhoward on Tue Oct 12 15:03:44 2004:

/tmp filled up again.  Fixed.

#47 of 109 by tsty on Wed Oct 13 08:11:44 2004:

 it fille up again an hour or so ago .. but fixed now, somehow.

#48 of 109 by albaugh on Fri Oct 15 16:38:15 2004:

Just now:  Tried to telnet to grex, connection failed, twice in a row.  Was
able to connect/"login" via backtalk.  Then went back and was able to
connect/login via telnet.  This has happened before.  Comments?

#49 of 109 by davel on Fri Oct 15 16:50:06 2004:

Just a few minutes ago, I & some others I talked with (phones) had a lot of
trouble connecting to anything at all through the internet.  I'd say something
was not working out there, & that it got fixed.

#50 of 109 by jor on Fri Oct 15 20:15:48 2004:

        Interesting. I was in an office about 11:45 a.m.,
        and their LAN had just lost their Comcast
        internet connection.

#51 of 109 by twenex on Sun Oct 17 19:40:31 2004:

Grex is now back up, but there is as yet no explanation as to why it was down
today (Sunday). It might be nice to have one, if it's possible.

#52 of 109 by janc on Sun Oct 17 21:39:47 2004:

Checking the staff conference, it appears that Joe rebooted Grex.  It
had crashed.  There was no error message on the console.

#53 of 109 by twenex on Sun Oct 17 21:40:48 2004:

Ah. Fair enough, thanks.

#54 of 109 by gelinas on Mon Oct 18 01:31:16 2004:

I've now updated the motd.  I'm sorry that I didn't have time to do so
while in the Pumpkin.

#55 of 109 by davel on Mon Oct 18 17:57:43 2004:

Joe, thanks for rebooting.  Much more important, much as we all like to know
what's going on.

#56 of 109 by rcurl on Tue Oct 19 18:21:08 2004:

Has something changed in internet access to Grex? rlogin used to work to
telnet to Grex, but now it doesn't work.

#57 of 109 by janc on Fri Oct 22 14:42:52 2004:

I can't think of anything, unless it is a change in the configuration of the
firewall that I don't know about.  When did it last work for you?

#58 of 109 by rcurl on Fri Oct 22 16:51:55 2004:

It may have been several weeks before I mentioned it that I had previously
used rlogin at all. I had been connecting using the MacSSH client which
does not have ssh1, but recently have been using the Terminal client with
ssh1.

#59 of 109 by janc on Sat Oct 23 03:23:54 2004:

I'm not aware of any changes in that time frame.

#60 of 109 by naftee on Sat Oct 23 22:47:14 2004:

In your frame of reference, (Inertial F.O.R.) that is unlikely.

#61 of 109 by richard on Tue Oct 26 00:27:50 2004:

Got the following when I tried to log on earlier:

"Backtalk Crash!
Mon Oct 25 20:26:07 2004
Oops! The authors of Backtalk are deeply sorry to confess that our 
program has failed to operate correctly. This is due to an error in 
Backtalk itself, or in one of Backtalk's script files, or in the 
configuration of the system. It is probably not due to anything you 
might have done. The page below contains an error message and a 
detailed dump of the state Backtalk was in when the error occurred. 
This may be useful to anyone trying to fix the problem.

All this information has been logged, but it may still be helpful for 
you to report this error and the circumstances under which it occurred 
to the system administrators. 

Thanks for your assistance in getting the bugs out of this 
conferencing system. We sincerely and humbly beg your forgiveness."

#62 of 109 by aruba on Tue Oct 26 00:30:44 2004:

What was the error message, Richard?

#63 of 109 by gregb on Wed Oct 27 16:40:45 2004:

From my experience, nothing'll get done.  I've noted problems with
Backtalk in the past and have never gotten any response or has the
problems been fixed.  Backtalk seems to be the step-child of Grex.  And
gets treated as such.

#64 of 109 by aruba on Wed Oct 27 22:38:09 2004:

That hasn't been my experience.  Jan is very active programming things, and
just lately he's done a huge amount of work to get NextGrex up and running.

However, I'm sure he will need the error message from Richard to be able to
duplicate the problem.

#65 of 109 by baker on Thu Oct 28 01:53:57 2004:

I would like to send Jan a loaf of bred in return for his work on Grex, which
I hope will be a duitiful business partner.  It's the "yeast" i can do.

#66 of 109 by naftee on Thu Oct 28 02:17:39 2004:

Dude, pass the shrooms

#67 of 109 by gull on Thu Oct 28 13:35:57 2004:

Re resp:63: We're not the only site that runs Backtalk, and it *is*
being actively developed by Jan.  According to
http://www.unixpapa.com/backtalk/, we're not running the most current
version. Probably he's holding out on doing any major upgrades on the
current system, since it's going to be replaced by NextGrex anyway.

#68 of 109 by keesan on Fri Oct 29 04:44:12 2004:

Today it has been taking about a minute to actually send a mail.

#69 of 109 by keesan on Fri Oct 29 05:07:02 2004:

And a minute to time out on outgoing telnet.  Maybe the mail just got queued?

#70 of 109 by keesan on Fri Oct 29 05:08:24 2004:

And no incoming mail since 2 pm.  Time to call staff.

#71 of 109 by drew on Fri Oct 29 06:29:13 2004:

Internet connection seems to be hosed. Again.

#72 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Oct 29 10:29:19 2004:

Yes, it does seem to be the Internet connection.  I'm power-cycling the DSL
modem right now.  That is, I've turned it off and will turn it back on
shortly.

#73 of 109 by gregb on Fri Oct 29 16:25:35 2004:

Re. 64:  No offense, Mark, but being in the inner circle makes your 
observation perceptively biased.  The problems/concerns I brought up 
occured some time ago, before Jan's work on NextGrex, of which I 
agree, he's been working his buns off with.  I look forward to giving 
the new system a spin.

#74 of 109 by rcurl on Tue Nov 2 06:37:31 2004:

rlogin and ssh1 are not working tonight. (I don't try relogin very often,
but tonight ssh1, my usual, wasn't working either, so I'm finally on with
plain old telnet.)

#75 of 109 by gelinas on Tue Nov 2 11:37:23 2004:

round 20:00 last evening, I was having problems with ssh, too.  Also with
ps and top.  With ssh, the failure was in the identification exchange,
while with ps and top the problem was allocating memory.  I've no idea
what caused the problem, since I couldn't use my usual tools to diagnose
the problem.

I thought a reboot was needed, but an hour and a half later, it was better.
(I couldn't do the re-boot myself.)

#76 of 109 by rcurl on Tue Nov 2 15:25:50 2004:

ssh1 OK this AM.

#77 of 109 by tpryan on Tue Nov 2 17:10:27 2004:

        Is a modem in the group sick.  I had to dial twice?

#78 of 109 by mcnally on Tue Nov 2 17:31:23 2004:

  re #75:  around about that time I tried to log in via ssh, then was
  dumped when my shell wouldn't fork for lack of memory.

#79 of 109 by bru on Wed Nov 3 01:58:45 2004:

I just sat idle for over 2 hours and did not get booted.

#80 of 109 by gelinas on Wed Nov 3 04:56:50 2004:

I restarted idled.  Thank you for the report, bru.

#81 of 109 by mastercg on Thu Nov 4 20:06:44 2004:

I appreciate the work being done with Grex...  I am fairly new to using this
type of system and would enjoy getting an email explaining how to run a dial
in bbs's type system with one phone number...  I have always wanted to run
something like this but on a much smaller scale and more like a bb's. 
maximumbidder459@yahoo.com

#82 of 109 by gregb on Fri Nov 5 16:55:09 2004:

You mean BBS, I'm sure.  I remember the good'ol days of home-run BBS's.
 Had one myself called "Get Serious."  Unfortunately, I ran it on
limited hours so it never took off.

#83 of 109 by remmers on Sat Nov 6 11:50:46 2004:

Does *anybody* run dial-up-only (non-internet) BBS's these days?

#84 of 109 by krokus on Mon Nov 8 03:22:56 2004:

Yes, there are still a few of them around.  Not very many of them,
since they are quite out-moded by the web chats.

#85 of 109 by micklpkl on Fri Nov 12 15:56:12 2004:

While chatting in party, this error popped up:

/var: write failed, file system is full

thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

#86 of 109 by mfp on Fri Nov 12 15:58:06 2004:

I had the same thing but in BBS and about /tmp last night.

#87 of 109 by keesan on Wed Nov 24 16:15:34 2004:

Within the last five minutes mail sending slowed to a crawl, telnet times out,
and lynx won't work.  Are we off the net again?  Mail to another grexer sends
immediately.  (I know because another grexer just emailed me about the
problem).

#88 of 109 by keesan on Wed Nov 24 19:58:08 2004:

I got my last spam at around 6 am, so we must be off the net.

#89 of 109 by albaugh on Thu Nov 25 01:47:58 2004:

I only received 3 pieces of SPAM today, instead of the usual 40+, so something
must be / have been up...

#90 of 109 by gelinas on Thu Nov 25 04:21:29 2004:

Yeah, the DSL modem was apparently having trouble again.  I power-cycled it
at or about 20:30.

#91 of 109 by slynne on Thu Nov 25 05:21:11 2004:

Thanks!

#92 of 109 by other on Thu Nov 25 15:31:07 2004:

http://www.hvcn.org/info/grex/

Above is the address of the "Grex Status page."

It can be useful for information about what is going on when Grex is
unavailable, but it has not been in use since 2002.  I updated it during
last night's apparent outage, and again this morning.

#93 of 109 by mary on Thu Nov 25 16:41:27 2004:

The weather in Ann Arbor, last night, around 20:30, was simply awful.  I
was very happy to be home, warm and safe, simply watching it happen.  A
huge thank you to Joe for going to the Pumpkin so the rest of us could
Grex. 

Wow.

#94 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Nov 26 02:30:25 2004:

Daughter-mine drove.  She appreciates the appreciation. :)

#95 of 109 by keesan on Fri Nov 26 03:00:33 2004:

Will this problem go away when we colocate?

#96 of 109 by gelinas on Fri Nov 26 03:06:04 2004:

Yes.

But we don't know yet what new problem(s) will crop up.

 :)

#97 of 109 by twenex on Fri Nov 26 15:13:08 2004:

Re: #95: What problem?

When using bbs via backtalk, even when logged in as myself instead of 
anonymously, the program thinks I have not read any responses at all 
yet, so comes up with the same number of unread items as the total 
number of items, and no unread new responses. This does not happen 
when I log in via ssh (or telnet, presumably) and use "% bbs".

#98 of 109 by twenex on Fri Nov 26 15:21:03 2004:

The exact error is:

Agora has 244 items: 244 brand new, 0 with new responses.

Backtalk also thinks I haven't customized my hotlist.

#99 of 109 by gelinas on Sat Nov 27 02:21:42 2004:

Grex stalled this afternoon.  I've now rebooted it.

#100 of 109 by gelinas on Sat Nov 27 03:14:32 2004:

Re #97: the problem of the intermittent failures of the DSL connection.
Which we _really_ wish could be made to go away sooner. :(

#101 of 109 by slynne on Sat Nov 27 04:35:59 2004:

Thanks again, Joe.

#102 of 109 by tod on Wed Dec 1 18:09:42 2004:

<coyote@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <coyote@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)
<ken@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <ken@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)
<saw@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <saw@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)
<slynne@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <slynne@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)
<stern@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <stern@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)
<wh@cyberspace.org>
    (reason: 552 <wh@cyberspace.org>... mailbox is full)

Is slynne still on the board of directors?

I don't mean to pick on her, but I think an anti-spam solution is one of the
top 3 necessary projects for the next board of directors.
The top 3 being: NextGrex, Membership, and  Anti-Spam

Vote for tod!

#103 of 109 by naftee on Sun Dec 5 05:20:11 2004:

It seems I can't recieve mail with my GreX account!  I missed an important
e-mail from aruba back in August.

#104 of 109 by naftee on Sun Dec 5 05:31:03 2004:

OK guys!  I solved this problem by creating a .forward .
Sorry for missing your e-mail, aruba!  Anytime you're in the nation's capital,
feel free to write me!

#105 of 109 by tsty on Mon Dec 6 11:00:32 2004:

<<naftee is in kiev ?????>> huh??

#106 of 109 by naftee on Tue Dec 7 05:53:56 2004:

UH, nononon.  Ottawa is the nation's capital!

#107 of 109 by tsty on Tue Dec 7 09:20:56 2004:

oh.  oops! ithought ukrained your necka  bit there ....

#108 of 109 by naftee on Wed Dec 8 22:11:59 2004:

nonon, you have nothing to "craindre", my French brother.

#109 of 109 by tsty on Thu Dec 23 19:56:29 2004:

<g>.

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