68 new of 219 responses total.
Just re-booted.
Telnet and pine are working again but I have not received any mail for a few hours except something from grex. I would have expected 10 spams in this period.
Grex panicked and did not reboot itself Monday evening.
I think I fixed the terminal server to connect to the new machine last night, so dial-in should be working again. I also think I fixed the web proxy to accept requests from the new machine.
Thanks, Joe!
What does 'grex panicked' mean in more technical terms? Is this some odd hardware problem or a response to something done to the software?
Software.
I get a kernel panic when I tell it there is more memory than actual, or to put root on some nonexistent device. Did you do something equally clever?
I installed a slightly newer version of backtalk and fronttalk. Backtalk has suffered quite a few internal reorganizations aimed it making various things I want to do in the future easier to do. There's always a risk of introducing new bugs when I do this, but that's life. The major bug fix in Backtalk is to the date parsing. "read since" type commands should work much better. Fronttalk has had more noticable changes. First, it now has command line editting (via a package known to Unix geeks as "readline") similar to what you see in tcsh and other modern shells. That means you can use the arrow key to move back into the command you are typing and edit it, or use the up arrow key to move back in the command history and reissue previous commands. The "read since" command was working badly. It should now work much better. The date syntax understood by Backtalk isn't exactly the same as Picospan or Yapp - it actually accepts a much wider range of date syntaxes. Doing "help date" in Fronttalk will tell you more than any sane person wants to know about Fronttalk date formats. Backtalk now implements the Picospan "date" and "cdate" commands, but they are pretty useless, so don't worry about it. Control-Z generally should work better now in Fronttalk - things should work smoothly when you suspend/restart the program. Actually, part of this was a BSD portability fix in Gate, so it may fix sometime problems for Picospan users too. I would encourage regular users of "bbs" (Picospan) to try out Fronttalk. You run Fronttalk with the "ft" command. The plan is that Fronttalk will eventually replace Picospan on Grex. Trying it out now to make sure it behaves well for you would be wise.
Re 159: No, this is probably an OpenBSD bug. There is a theory that it is due to using soft updates, a feature that may not be fully mature in OpenBSD version 3.5. We don't actually know what caused the last crash though. Things are being tried.
A kernel panic is the UNIX version of a Windows "Blue Screen of Death" - except that the last time it happened every day was probably in 1971 or so. For the record, Windows isn't the worst - IBM's ill-fated TimeSharing System, TSS, took over 10 minutes to boot up, but mean time to failure was less than that. D'Oh!
I am trying out fronttalk now and when I hit the left arrow I get [D and a beep. Am I supposed to be able to back up? The up arrow give me [A and a beep. I have an 84-key keyboard and am using linux. Down arrow [B. Right arrow [C. Backspace works as expected.
Not sure if this is just me or not, but instead of seeing apostrophes in responses I keep seeing: ' In case it matters, I'm using Internet Explorer.
I am seeing the same thing. I am also using backtalk with IE browser.
Oops wrong item.
(Yeah, I noticed that too. ;) )
Re #164, #165: Can you point to some specific items where the ' problem occurs?
resp:163 (keesan): I would guess that your termcaps are set wrong. Do your arrow keys work in anything else? resp:164: (mooncat) IE doesn't do ' ? Yuck. I guess I should take that out.
Backtalk changes lots of symbols into responses into other things, like < becomes < and & becomes &. The browsers change them back. The new backtalk also changes ' into '. Evidently IE does not change it back.
OK, I've fixed Backtalk to turn quotes into ' which IE apparantly does understand.
Right - I suspected it was IE lameness. Seems to me I had a problem once with IE not recognizing ''' despite every other modern browser doing so.
To state the obvious, IE is not a modern browser.
Yeah - scratch the word 'other' from my response #172.
My left arrow acts the same on my 101-key keyboard - BOTH left arrows. Terminal type is vt100. I am telnetted from linux. Perhaps I should choose linux instead.
Have you tried vt52 or vt102 or vt220?
The problem with the ' characters is fixed. Thanks, Jan! Unfortunately I am limited to IE at work. As IE was one of the first browsers with the capability to display XML, I am surprised it doesn't handle the ' character entity. I wonder why it doesn't?
All better now! Thanks!!
I think VT320 is the same as VT200 or VT102 with more features.
re 173 How so ?
Sindi: In the old days "vt100" refered to an actual terminal you could put on your desk rather than a protocol. People would use these extremely dumb computers to connect to servers, and what codes were sent to the server when they hit and arrow key were different depending on what make and model of terminal you had. A DEC VT100 would send different codes than an IBM 3101 (I miss my trusty IBM 3101 - that thing could really hold a desk down). Whatever software you use to connect to Grex (or under Unix, the terminal window it runs in) pretends to be one or another of these fine old historical monsters. Usually either VT100 if the programmers were lazy, or a much extended version of VT100 called ANSI if they were more ambitious. So the codes sent depend on the software on your computer, not on the actual keyboard you are using. You mention Linux. Are you running xwindows? If so, you probably want 'xterm'. If not, I guess probably 'ansi'. However, I could be wrong about this. Maybe your TERM setting is fine. If the arrow keys work for you in lynx, it is probably right. Fronttalk doesn't actually do any of this logic itself. It uses a library module called "readline" that is also used by many of the shells on Grex, like tcsh. It would be very odd if your arrow keys worked in any of those, but not in Fronttalk. One thing just barely worth checking: Type "display readline" in fronttalk. It should say that readline is turned on and mention "Gnu" (since we are using the Gnu readline library).
Re #177: Microsoft decided to stop all development on IE a few years ago. I guess they figured IE was so well entrenched as the leading browser that they could rest on their laurels. Unfortunately that left their support for XML and CSS in an incomplete state. Meanwhile, web standards have been evolving and other browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Opera) have been keeping up, but not IE. Web designers are not pleased with IE these days.
I have typed 'tset ansi' (which gave me the usual login messages for some reason) and then ft and will now test arrow keys. I still get [D. My terminal setting on my linux computer is 'linux'. Then I choose vt100 at grex (I also tried linux here with no better results). Where do I type display readline, at line start in fronttalk? display readline I just typed it and got nothing back. I am not using X. Lynx and links work (offline anyway) as expected here.
re 182 Oh. Is this related to the fact that Microsoft stopped working on their own virtual machine for Internet Explorer, and told peole to use Sun's instead? This being for java.
This response has been erased.
I am trying out ft with linux, vt100, or ansi terminal type, sshed or telnetted from linux.
Re resp:182: That's what happens when one company dominates the market and manages to push everyone else out. Innovation comes to a halt. Re resp:184: Not exactly. They lost a lawsuit with Sun, and aren't allowed to distribute their VM anymore. I don't understand the details, but I think it had to do with them creating an incompatible version of Java by "embracing and extending" Sun's API.
http://java.sun.com/lawsuit/ heh. very interesting.
OK. This time, I really think I've fixed the terminal server. I had to reconfigure each port, individually. Dial-in *should* be working again. Finally.
Thanks, Joe. Must be frustrating.
I tried to dial in ten minutes ago and got three lines of garbage followed by a hangup, so I telnetted but the load average was 89 with ggg running 90 or more copies of the same process for the past 4 hours (minutes?) or so. It was too slow to figure out if this is a dial-in vandal.
Installed a new version of fronttalk with various bug fixes. I don't know what's going on with keesan's arrow keys. It does say "Fronttalk" when it starts up, right? Should be version 0.9.0 now.
Any chance you can install the current version on m-net ?
Grex will be getting a new telephone number for dial-in access. We aren't able to move the old number to the new location.
Bummer.
One number for two lines?
I have no root access on M-Net, so I can't install anything there. I did however install version 0.9.1 here. Fixes a few more bugs. Adds a few more fairly obscure features. Read Garager if you want gory details.
O,ok. thanks;.!
Two lines, two numbers, in a hunt group. So folks really only need to know one number, just like now.
A dial-in user asks what the new numbers will be.
As soon as I know, I'll spread the word.
The new telephone numbers are 734-484-0512 and 734-484-0513. The numbers will not answer until the modems are moved, of course. I expect to move the modems tomorrow. The old number will forward to the new number for ninety days. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Does that mean Gloria has motion sickness?
This response has been erased.
Yup. And she married Al.
One of the modems is now connected to grex. I think it is connected to tty00, which is now enabled. I know it is plugged into 484-0512. So if someone wanted to try it, I'd love to hear how the attempt went.
It is working perfectly with bbs, instant gratification.
Coolness. :) And you are on 00. :)
I am number 00! I should get off soon and let someone else try it.
I installed a second modem and replaced the first modem. I _think_ the problem with first modem was caused by heat: the modem was lying flat on top of the machine case. I moved it to the top of the cabinet and set it on edge, as had been done in the Pumpkin. I also moved Grex's powerplug to the powerstrip the modems are plugged in to, to lessen our 'footprint'. It may also alleviate grounding problems between the modems and Grex.
thanks, joe!
thanks, Joe!
thanks, joe!
http://www.yourbuddygeorgebushforjesus.org/
agora's "read new item" dosn't seem to be working
How are you accessing Agora -- Picospan? Fronttalk? Backtalk?
backtalk
I would like to announce that I've begun a project of amputating my superego.
mute is better than amputate, but i applaud the thought
You have several choices: