135 new of 219 responses total.
The file-table filled up, so no more files could be opened. I had to cycle the power to log on.
Just now I couldn't use backtalk, I switched to dial up and got in but things are hanging severly.
I am dialed in and bbs (picospan) works fine. Charcat I got your mails.
We have turned off the delivery of mail while we move the spool files out of
/var and onto a different partition.
You will see a variety of error messages, because many things use /var for
temporary space, until we get this problem resolved. For example, vi saves
files to /var/tmp/vi.recover to allow the recovery of changes made but not
yet committed should the something crash while a user is editting a file. So
users of vi will see a message like
Error: Recovery file: No space left on device
Modifications not recoverable if the session fails
when they begin to edit a file. For now, ignore the error reports and go on
with what you were doing.
STeve freed up some space in /var, so we've turned mail on again. Some time later today (i.e., after sunrise, 3 January 2005), we'll take grex down while we move the mail spool files to a different partition.
What happened to all my files?!!!
My files have returned just as mysteriously as they disappeared, and my mail has been restored too. :-)
Re resp:82: I agree with you for the most part...however, a system hitting its maximum open file limit falls more into the 'misconfiguration' category than the 'stability' category. You have to remember that very, very few systems these days have the number of users logging on simultaneously that Grex does. It's not surprising that the default, shipping configuration of OpenBSD needs a little tweaking. Most OpenBSD systems are used as network firewalls or the like.
Fair enough.
User mail files now live in their own partition, meaning that we have lots of space for them now. We're at about 14% utilitzation at the moment. There are still more things to do with mail but I think things are going ok now. Also removed about 24,000 entries in the mail spool that were some form of mail bombing.
Like, yay. Thanks!
http://www.jewsforjesus.org/
I had allocated a disk partition for mail (/var/mail) but I had left it commented out in /etc/fstab (because normally during development we don't want to mount the production mail directory). I forgot to uncomment it, so the separate partition was never mounted and the mail, instead, all ended up on the /var disk partition, which was never intended to be big enough to hold it. Oops. Thanks to the staffers who figured this out and copied things into the proper mail partition. Grex shouldn't be hitting it's maximum open file limit. When I built Grex's kernel, I just took the default size and doubled it. Obviously this didn't do the job. I need to review what limits exist and how they are configured to fine tune this. Ideally things should be set up so that no one user can consume all the system's resources.
By the way, Grex's web pages (including backtalk) are now accessible with teh "https" protocol. So you can run backtalk at "https://www.grex.org/cgi-bin/backtalk" We don't have a real certificate (those cost more money than Grex can afford), so it's just a crappy self-issued certificate. However, you should be able to tell your browser to accept it and not have to worry about it. Even with the crappy certificate you'll be improving the security of your connection to Grex substantially. (With the old "http" protocol you password was sent over the net in the clear with each connection.) I recommend this for all users.
I'll be sending out paper receipts to people who donated to Grex last year and would like a receipt for tax purposes. So if you'd like a receipt for your donations, let me know.
thank janc and the others who made this new system and made the transition so smooth. stunning! applause!! applause!!
re resp:98: I notice I get a constant stream of pop-ups: Security Information This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items? Is this because the Backtalk buttons are accessible only via "http"? I'd really like a fix if possible. Thanks!
Hmmm...interesting. I haven't looked at the code, but yes, very likely the buttons are being fetched from a plain http URL. However, the buttons are not in a directory where authentication is required either, so your password is not being sent in the http requests for the buttons. So why in the world would we want to encrypt those requests? There's nothing secret about backtalk buttons. Encrypting them just adds extra overhead on Grex and on your browser. So I can't think of any sensible reason to encrypt button requests except to make your silly browser happy. (By the way, what silly browser is that anyway?) I should probably do it to make silly browser's happy. Sigh.
It's happened to me a couple times, I'm using Internet Exploder... er, Explorer. ;) Not my fault, it's the only thing work offers and downloads are not allowed.
I prefer the term "Exploiter", though the way things are going we might get a bit less exploitation soon.
Personally, I prefer "Insecure Explorer".
> the way things are going we might get a bit less exploitation soon Something developing on the MS front?
No, but Firefox is picking up momentum. A US university (for example) (was it Princeton?) - just sent an email to all its staff and students urging them to drop IE for Firefox, because IE is so insecure.
I was using IE from home. Sorry to ask for a fix to such a stupid problem (and yes, it *is* a stupid problem). Does Firefox handle it better? I won't be using https as long as I have to keep clicking on pop-ups in order to use it.
Firefox can block popups, but that might disable the secure login itself in this case. The only other fix I can think of is to email the webmaster and ask him politely to write better code!
That's not a popup in the usual sense of the word; it's a browser dialog window. IIRC, Firefox does not complain about mixed secure and insecure items on a page; if I am wrong then it has a "never complain about this" checkbox on the dialog.
Oh, those. duh. Jim's solution sounds like a winner, though.
ANy of you ever delete the certificate authority roots out of your browsers and start from scratch?
Nope. Why, you don't trust Versign? ;)
This response has been erased.
MSIE has pretty configurable security settings. I'd try looking for ones that might be applicable here. Depending on how much you rely on your brain and how much on your browser for secure surfing (you're far better off with the latter), you might just want to switch the applicable setting off.
re resp:115: that possibility had not occurred to me. I did this: Tools > Internet Options > Security > Internet > Custom Level Under "Miscellaneous" there is a setting "Display Mixed Content" which is set by default to "Prompt" I set it to "Enable" and that removed the problem. Thanks!
Re #114 Is a cert from a company really necessary? And the cheapest I've found from a source I trust (which is either verisign, geotrust, or thawte) is $149/year (thawte.com). IMHO, Grex's own certs are plenty fine for what it uses them for.
I agree. I told Firefox to accept Grex's certificate permanently, so I wouldn't be nagged about it every time. I don't see what benefit a trust path to an entity that's trusted by default (which is what you're paying for) would have, here.
This response has been erased.
Some people may have more problems in their scripts now that we've moved away from a SysV UNIX to a BSD UNIX - the "usr/ucb" directory in a SunOS sytem is where BSD UNIX commands were put in Suns SysV OS. Something like the move from Korn shell scripts to bash. Shell scripts using Sun's SysV commands may not work the same in BSD (or be missing entirely) so be aware. Also, there are more differences in the directory structure and the whole environment and deamon setup that may affect scripts written in a SysV system. Better test your scripts before trusting them.
Ksh is now under an open source license. Failing that, pdksh might be available, but it's a klone of ksh88, not 93.
Er, clone.
http://www.clonesforjesus.org/
SunOS before version 5 (aka Solaris) is BSD, not System V.
That is, SunOS =>5 is aka Solaris.
re #107 ..... here is the stuff about that university : Penn State University has just told its 80,000 students to switch to an alternative browser such as Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, or Safari. They are urging their students to stop using Internet Explorer. Go here for the entire article in Information Week: <http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml; jsessionid=MJHKZY2Y4HQ5OQSNDBCCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=55301109> obviously, the url needs to be pasted twice into your location field, minus the <> stuff. you will get this headline: Penn State Tells 80,000 Students To Chuck IE lovely headline .......
http://www.jewsforjesus.org/ (site only viewable in ie)
I'll help TS out - try http://tinyurl.com/63zy2 in place of that long url. What's going on eith Mozilla/Netscape? The article doesn't mention Netscape as an alternative, though I've gotten the sense it is now related in some fashion to Mozilla.
Mozilla and Firefox are based on the same rendering engine. I'm not sure about Netscape; I think it forked off a couple years ago, but I could be wrong.
Mozilla began as an open source fork of Netscape; Firefox began as a webbrowsing alternative to Mozilla, which is an Internet user's kitchen sink.
The "About Netscape" under Netscape 7.1 says "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1" and "Copyright 2000-2003 Netscape Communications Corporation. Portions of this code are copyrighted by Contributors to the Mozilla codebase under the Mozilla Public License and Netscape Public License." So, is Netscape 7.1 the same as Mozilla 5.0?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the latest Netscape and Mozilla use the same "rendering engine" (Gecko) -- meaning that web pages will look the same in both browsers -- but differ in other details such as the user interface (menus, toolbars, etc.).
after Netscape 4, the entire codebase was thrown out, and they started from scratch. The project was handed to a semi-independent, non-profit (I think) organisation, the Mozilla Foundation, and the source opened. Mozilla was released as a development version, starting w/ version .1 (or, before that, Milestones counting up to I think 18); every so often, especially quality Mozilla releases have been forked as official Netscape releases, starting with NS 6.0. At some point in the last several years, it was decided that instead of offering the entire kitchen sink at once, users should be able to just get the parts they want and build their own sink at home, so now there are the Moz Firefox (browser), Thunderbird (e-mail), Sunbird (calendar), and Lightning (calendar/address book synchro, I think) projects; you can also still get the entire package at once. You can read more about Mozilla at http://www.mozilla.org/about/ ; there's probably a link to a page about the history of the Mozilla project around there somewhere, although I don't see it.
This response has been erased.
re 128 .. thakxx rcurl.
http://www.omegahat.org/rcurl/
It seems to be case sensitive. Try http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/ I suppose, eventually, everyone here will be a Package...
For users of "mail", here is something I discovered is different about the mail program on nextgrex: R [message list] reply to message sender(s). r [message list] reply to message sender(s) and all recipients. Use of just lower case "r" annoyingly adds you (the recipient) to the reply distribution. Use capital R instead.
re 137 Yeah, whoops. Silly me for thinking all URLs were not case-sensitive.
nope, just the domain.
Grex will be unavailable from 12:00 to approximately 15:00 tomorrow, 22 January 2005, while it is moved from the Pumpkin to provide.net. The old machine will move back to its old IP address, but logins (and mail) will be disabled; it is moving back to provide DNS service for our domain until our domain registration is updated.
pwho bbs r r w pwho bbs bbs pwho
Does this mean grex will be available via the website using the old machine?
I don't quite see how you reached that conclusion, but no: www.cyberspace is an alias for grex.cyberspace, and so will move along with grex. I mentioned logins because _some_people will probably try to connect by IP address instead of domain name.
Why is it not possible to hook up the old grex to the same ISP connection and DSL modem to check if the problem is in the computer or in something else (such as the DSL modem or the connection to the ISP)? Would this interfere with using it as a DNS server? And why do we need a DNS server if grex is not working?
oldGrex _is_ on the same connection as the current grex. I log into it regularly. However, since I'm the only user, there is not much going on. There are other machines on the network as well, which other staff members use regularly. They have mentioned seeing similar behaviour there. We need a DNS server so that people can find our machine by its name. This is one of the functions of the main machine. However, DNS "bootstraps" from an IP address. Right now, that IP address is 216.93.104.34. Until I can get the new IP address registered, and so get the 'bootstrap' fixed, we have to keep a DNS server running on the old address.
Similar or ientical behavior? Could we have two different problems at once? The old problem was 2 minute freezes every few minutes. This is 10 sec freezes every couple seconds. The old problem occurred during telnet, not dialup. What is the motehrboard maker and model? Please email keesan@freeshell.org
ASUS, and I looked at the capacitors; they are fine. Grex is now in the new location. It will take a bit longer to get the dial-ins re-directed.
gelinas, why don't you refer ms. keesan to a text on networking, and save yourself some time and energy? I hate to see you stressing out.
Everything is nice and fast now. Good work. I was a little confused yesterday when I connected via dialin and got something like this after logging in: This is _NOT_ Grex. Use the domain name, not the IP address. Dialin Users NO CARRIER
Ssh connection is nearly instant. Telnet not working, but it worked this morning, very slowly.
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: