378 new of 870 responses total.
The problems with Grex are not related to bad capacitors. The story of them has been blown completely out of proportion compared with what has actually been experienced. Motherboards with weird looking capacitors are most often the fault of poorly made units, and not the dreaded improperly built type that do exist, but not in the amounts reported. Thanks to the staff people who moved Grex. Certainly an order of magnatude faster, if not more than that.
Joe moved Grex during a blizzard to keep the rest of us connected and happy. Thank you, Joe.
No kidding. Thanks a bazillion Joe!
Wow, on time even! The board we just fixed had several bulging capacitors out of 10. Jim replaced 6. The bulging ones tested okay, one that looked okay was completely shorted. You cannot tell just by looking at caps. Obviously grex is much happier at this new address. I still get the usual telnet lag but it can nearly keep up with my typing now. About a 2 sec wait for the cursor to move down one line. Well, maybe it is half as fast as my typing.
I don't think the telnet lag is any worse than it was last year so the problem that was plaguing us at the pumpkin seems to be fixed. I am using a 56K modem (which tends to connect at 33K or at most 39K) and dialins are generally alot faster. Joe, many thanks for your work on this.
Backtalk is working fine for the first time in a few days. Thanks Joe! for the move.
Backtalk is working great right now. Hail to the staff, particularly gelinas who moved Grex to the co-lo! Thanks very much!
Grex is almost as fast as M-Net now. Thanks Joe!
hey what do you mean "almost"? Lets have a contest, pick a file of a specific size, and download it to grex and mnet at the same time and see which chokes it down the fastest. I'd bet five bucks on Grex. :)
Yea, lets see which one goes over its monthly bandwidth quota quicker. *snort* Good idea, Richard.
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Let's hope folks don't turn Grex into an ftp warez site since it has a bandwidth quota.
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Telnet will not access grex right now - I tried two different programs. One told me it is not receiving the expected responses. ssh worked instantly.
Pine is not working again - the cursor just blinks. Mail works. Pine worked this morning when telnet worked. I recall it not working a week or so ago. I did not test mutt.
Whoa! -bash-2.05b$ w 9:17PM up 16 mins, 4 users, load averages: 0.32, 0.47, 0.44 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT jor p4 adsl-69-212-43-1 9:13PM 1 -csh charcat p5 64.31.11.168 9:15PM 0 /usr/local/bin/party_ krj p6 dialup-4.229.123 9:16PM 0 /usr/local/bin/party_ bookie p8 4.229.180.231 9:17PM 0 /usr/local/bin/bbs -bash-2.05b$ party party_ error: Cannot find your tty (/dev/ttyp7) in utmp I'm here, but I'm NOT here.
Not anymore :(
Attempts to access http://www.cyberspace.org/ from the Grex Lynx command
line yields:
Making HTTP connection to 216.93.104.35
followed by:
Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.
The web proxy is still on the old network connection.
re #507: correction -- Pine *does* work, but when I launched it earlier today it took an inordinately long time to load (from 3-5 minutes..)
Since I advised him to enter it in the "System Problems" item in Agora without giving sufficient info on how to do that, I'm reposting a response entered by user cobalt in another Agora item: > (89) #11/11: CoBALT eins261 (cobalt) Mon, Jan 24, 2005 (02:51) > Please pardon my off-topic question and I do not know how to post a new BBS > statement. I hope someone will assist me. My problem is simple: prior to > the GREX move to PROVIDE.NET I was able to "sign on" to Google. > > Now I cannot. LYNX won't even access the url, and LINKS says "no route > to host" when I attempt to access the SIGN IN link. > > I am not aware of any imposition of restrictions regarding sign on to > Google. > > Please someone tell me what is wrong. > Thank you.
grex's move is spectacular - thankxx to gelinas & others
The problem with google is probably related to the web proxy, which is still on the DSL link.
Logging in (via ssh), I saw:
mesg: Unable to find your tty (ttyp1) in utmp file
There is a mesg command in my .profile, but I don't understand this error.
I think I've seen it once or twice since the change to new Grex, but not
consistently. (But I might be wrong about either part of that.)
mesg has to find our entries in utmp in order to properly update wrttmp. Jan discovered that OpenBSD apparenlty writes data to utmp later than it probably should, so he added a delay and retry to mesg. Either the delay is not sufficiently long, or something else is going wrong.
Others have said it already, but thanks for the move, Joe. Backtalk's running faster than I've ever seen it.
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I have not received any mail from the outside world since some time yesterday. I can send myself mail from grex. Pine works. A message sent to staff from my non-grex address bounced back at 4:37 am this morning after trying for four hours. Has anyone else received outside mail today?
I have confirmed Sindi's problem with mail by doing my own test. About an hour ago I sent a message to Grex from kpunet.net. Checking the outgoing mail queue on the kpunet server I can see that my mailer's connection to grex has been timed out and the message is deferred: DNS from the remote host: > # nslookup > > set type=mx > > cyberspace.org > Server: localhost > Address: 127.0.0.1 > > cyberspace.org preference = 10, mail exchanger = grex.cyberspace.org > > > set type=a > > grex.cyberspace.org > > Name: grex.cyberspace.org > Address: 216.86.77.194 Attempt to connect to Grex's mail daemon: > # telnet grex.cyberspace.org smtp > Trying 216.86.77.194... > telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
tcptraceroute to Grex on port 25 (the SMTP port) ends at ypsi-sfld.provide.net (216.86.64.2) tcptraceroute to Grex on port 80 shows that ypsi-sfld.provide.net is the last hop before Grex. Looks like Grex's firewall is blocking port 25.
The following happened when telnetting and trying to connect as usual via
cyberspace.org The problem did not happen when immediately afterward I
connected via grex.org :
Connected to cyberspace.org
Grex central timekeeping. At the beep, the time is
2:25PM on Monday, 24 January 2005
New to grex? Type help at the login prompt
(ttyt6) grex login: albaugh
albaugh's Password:
This is NOT grex. Please use the domain name, not the IP address.
Dial-in Users: It will take a little bit longer to get the terminal
server properly configured. We apologise for the inconvenience.
- Grex Staff.
Connection closed by foreign host.
I just verified that the problem is repeatable - it wasn't a one-time glitch.
What the hell happened? I came back to bbs, and it says 91 new items! What keeps destroying my agora participation file?!!!
re #525: I haven't had any problems with my Agora participation file. That proves nothing, of course, but it does suggest that people who are having problems should probably at the very least add the name of the program they're using to read Agora to help staff debug. I'm using "bbs" (whatever that's a front-end to these days) but others may be using backtalk, fronttalk, or possibly other programs to munge their conference participation files.
I'm using "bbs' and my .agora??.cf sems to have
gone away amd, more amazingly, come back. Twice.
Re resp:523: Looks like the name server you're using is still caching Grex's old IP address. The problem may resolve itself given a day or so.
I always use bbs, from a shell session, unless backtalk (web) must be used due to shell inavailability. Under nextgrex, what happens to your (a) conference participation file if you get idle logged out? In old grex, that was never a problem (you would have to re-read the things before the logout happened, but you would lose your entire participation record).
I'm using bbs right now, but every time i try using the web interface, I get the same problem as albaugh.
http://www.thesameproblemasalbaughforjesus.org/
Bbs, earlier today I also lost my agora.cf file and did a fixseen.
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. No, you aren't seeing double. I repeated the report here hoping to keep any counter-examples to this, the "Systems Problems" item, and out of the "Systems Announcements" item.
After a several-day-long mail drought I've received several messages (Spam, of course..) Was it the reboot or was something else changed network-wise?
I don't know; I had to start mail by hand after the reboot because it's not starting automatically.
a) cyberspace.org still doesn't come here - only grex.org b) insult to injury - my grex mailbox got filled up, but every time I try to run mail to delete stuff, grex tells me /tmp quota exceeded, so I'm hosed. I sent an e-mail to staff for ideas. Anyone else have any?
paladin: no i'll be put in jail for beating someone to death with a keyboard ---- romantic joining from channel rightnow (Jan 25 16:47) hayz3141: what! paladin is a violent man! scholar: stop carrying on with a married man, pete! scholar: what! karenz: that would be a good bludgeoning instrument scholar: why are you so violent, paldin?! hayz3141: help! help scholar: that won't help you get out of jail, you know! scholar: karen! hayz3141: paladin is a violent pyscho with a keyboard! help! scholar: stop dishonouring your husband by cuckholding him! scholar: help! scholar: i'm going to post that in the system problems item, hayz!
re #536: depending on how much space you need, and whether you can find another world-writable temporary directory, possibly you could bypass the /tmp quota problem by setting the TMPDIR environment variable to something else. I haven't checked how the filesystem is laid out on Grex to see whether this would work..
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I suppose I could have gathered that from the startup message, but thanks..
Re 536: Can you tell which name server(s) you are using? All that I can check have the right address for cyberspace.org.
It looks like the changes to the terminal server didn't 'take.' I'll power-cycle it the next time I'm in the Pumpkin, which will probably be tomorrow morning.
I can now forward mail without having to make it into an attachment - thanks to whoever fixed this. I exceeded my /tmp quota one time by trying to save a large file to it. If you tried to use /tmp recently how can you figure out which files in there you still own so as to delete them? I. e., list all files that you own in /tmp. Surely there is some command for this. How often is /tmp automatically emptied?
w3m www.google.com -- opening socket............... lynx google - tries to access the IP number and nothing happens links - g - www.google.com - works instantly
The command you want, Sindi, is
find /tmp -user keesan -ls
It looks like I'll also have to kill and restart the web proxy.
Why is links working if lynx is not?
"links - g - www.google.com - works instantly" Yes, but when you attempt to access the sign in link it fails with error "no route to host" "lynx google - tries to access the IP number and nothing happens" --the system seems to be attempting to access Grex's OLD ip address. Perhaps this is a DNS proxy issue with a stale cache? Thanks for attention to this matter.
Re #545, I copied a small file to /tmp, ls -l showed I had read-write-execute permissions but others had just read-execute permissions, and then find /tmp -user keesan -ls listed a bunch of files for all but one of which I was denied permission so I deleted the one that I had permission for (which I had copied). This is the answer to how to empty your overflowing mailbox.
No, it's not trying to reach grex's old IP address. The old address was 216.93.104.34; the address lynx is trying to reach is 216.93.104.35, which is the web proxy. The web proxy is still on the DSL link. I don't know if the problem you are seeing is caused by the DSL link being flakey or by the web proxy not being configured for the new subnet. I added the new subnet to the web proxy's configuration last night, but the "kill -HUP" may not have been enough to cause the proxy to reread its configuration file.
I don't see how the find command is "the answer to how to empty your
overflowing mailbox." It's just the way to find the files in /tmp that you
own. The error message
find: /tmp/lynx-mLGAA21624: Permission denied
means that we don't have sufficient access to the directory
/tmp/lynx-mLGAA21624 to see the files within it.
re 536 What! How could you e-mail staff if you could not run mail ?
-bash-2.05b$ w 12:00AM up 11:19, 20 users, load averages: 0.65, 0.62, 0.59 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT cross p0 fubar.cshack.net Tue05PM 2:22 -tcsh russ p1 sf31-d20.dynamic Tue11PM 3 -csh qw2 p2 e81-197-68-102.e Tue11PM 1 menu cobalt p3 218.13.94.233 Tue10PM 10 lynx contaxes p4 174-227.lib.umic Tue10PM 2 mail rasputin p5 dialup-4.247.140 12:00AM 0 lynx asddsaasddsaasddsa p7 - 12:00AM 0 w ryan p9 67.39.176.100 Tue11PM 0 all your base are belong to us ketsara pa 210.246.163.253 Tue11PM 16 -tcsh naftee pc 55sub16.edunet.u Tue11PM 0 -bash charcat pd host145.64-31-10 Tue11PM 0 /usr/local/bin/party_ pez pf ip68-228-34-112. Tue11PM 0 /usr/local/bin/party_ gelinas q0 216.86.65.248 Tue09PM 0 bbs richard q3 pool-70-19-93-15 Tue10PM 0 /usr/local/bin/party_ janc q4 h-69-3-69-232.sf Tue04PM 57 -csh jmhut q6 157.95.31.61 Tue11PM 15 (pine) gelinas qa 216.86.65.248 Tue10PM 2 lynx http://google.com srw qc pcp05308365pcs.w Tue10PM 1:33 -csh erikb qf a80-127-224-218. Tue10PM 16 mutt rcurl r1 pcp09229896pcs.s Tue11PM 0 pico /a/r/c/rcurl/.cfdir/cf.buffer Whoa.
whoa!
Whoa!
1. Yes, of course, this was normal prior to the move 2. I have checked again, the problem still exists, as explicated on the BBS System Problems Board, Item #544 and response. SUMMARY: links : can access google but forbids sign on, "no route to host" lynx : attempts to access old proxy then timeout. Thanks you for attention to this.
You can *send* mail to others without any bearing on your inbox!
Oh, I got the impression that you could not run mail.
When you run mail without a recipient list (or other command line parameters) it invokes it in "read the inbox" mode. Setting TMPDIR to my home directory also causes quota exceeded on mail startup. Who is going to fix this? (!) It is intolerable that I can't fix my situation due to system setup "flaws".
(In reference to Item #555 ): The Google link rejected by LINKS is an https link. I hope that https links are not restricted on this new server. Thank you for your attention to this.
re 558 So it can't "read the inbox" if your quota has exceeded ?
sorry: clarification of Item #559- LINKS loads www.google.com without error (I believe another user has mentioned this) and it is the sign-on that fails with error "no route to host" but the sign-on link being accessed by LINKS is an HTTPS link. So seeing that LINKS can access http://www.google.com there seems to be no problem there whatsoever, but actually the problem PERHAPS is the LINKS rejection of an HTTPS page. Please respond at your convenience. Thank you for attention to this matter.
Re 554 - proof that 8 character logins are enough for normal users. And that longer ones don't display properly in certain programs. Longer ones are also a nuisance to add to the twit filter. I thought that the mail problem has to do with /tmp being over quota and removing files owned by the user in /tmp would fix it. I just had a 20 sec freeze. Shades of old grex.
There was some kind of routing problem at provide.net about an hour ago. It may come back; I don't know. Ah. Yes, clearing out your files from /tmp would give you more room for mail's temporary files.
I'm seeing: & a p o s ; instead of a single quote character, using Backtalk this morning, only on Grex. (I don't get the same thing on M-Net.)
Oops, apparently posted in the wrong item- but yeah, having the same problem as jep. (Maybe it's a Perry thing. ;) )
No, I am having the same problem
I just got a legitimate email in 8859-9 (Turkish - someone sent me a tel and I guessed he was Turkish and emailed back what I thought meant 'I don't speak Turkish' but maybe I left out the 'not') so please don't set the spam filter to rule out subject lines in other charsets. I got a 'From' in Chinese recently and a message body in Russian. bbs is working fine. Procmail just threw out 6 spams in 2 hours and if this is typical I must be getting about 70/day. Any progress towards choosing a spam filter or at least porting Marcus's minimal one?
5 more spams since 10:30 (in one hour).
cyberspace.org now yields grex
&%$&%$&* grex froze while I was entering the following: I have *no* files on /tmp!!! The problem is that my filled mailbox, which apparently mail wants to replicate somewhere while it's running, is larger than my quota on /tmp - and also larger than my quota in my home directory. Cannot someone on staff simply pick a larger, more suitable quota on /tmp to address this situation, and deploy it? A larger personal quota for me should also allow me to clean out my mailbox, but it is not addressing the underlying problem of incorrect settings for mailbox versus /tmp quota. Note: I'm not faulting anyone. But now that we know there's a problem, it should be corrected. P.S. Curiously, and different from old grex, since my .forward file has mail left in my grex mailbox as well as being forwarded off-grex, I continue to receive the forwarded mail at my non-grex account. I assume that the messages are *not* stored in my filled mailbox, and I wonder if senders are getting "mailbox full" bounces...
My arrow keys on 101 or 84-key keyboard do not work to move around within the text in fronttalk with vt100 or linux, sshed with linux to grex. [D beep etc. I will try dialing directly with kermit when that is possible. vt320.
It's great that Grex is up at Provide.Net and that Grex via the Web is working fine. Unfortunately, the dialins are still hosed. Here is what I just got when I tried to log in: Welcome to Grex! It may take a few seconds to connect. Grex is the Midnight Snack of Champs New to grex? Type help at the login prompt groupie.cyberspace.org login: dpc dpc's Password: This is NOT grex. Please use the domain name, not the IP address. Dial-in Users End of message. I have gotten this several times over the past week. I have no idea what "groupie.cyberspace.org" is. Also, the "Dial-in Users" line was truncated, and I was promptly logged off. I was dialing 761-3000, so I am sure that I did in fact reach Grex. What's happening here?
Re 572: kingjon reports the same thing, as of (I think) last night.
What's happening is that "groupie" is now using the IP address that used to belong to "grex." I *tried* to tell the terminal server to use the new IP address for grex, but it doesn't seem to have taken. I'll try again. The machine known as "groupie" was known as "grex" until a month ago, BTW. I put it back on its old address because we need a name server at that address until I get the domain name registry updated. I'll post the full text of its "nologin" file as soon as I can log on to groupie.
havign a problem loging in just now vie telnet.
Now experiencing dns name resolution timeouts for lynx and links. Thank you for your attention to this.
Similar delays (presumably DNS timeouts) earlier today when launching pine. No delay just now.
The full text of groupie's "nologin" file is:
This is NOT grex. Please use the domain name, not the IP address.
Dial-in Users: It will take a little bit longer to get the terminal
server properly configured. We apologise for the inconvenience.
- Grex Staff.
DNS timeouts for LINKS and LYNX I am posting this only because I see DNS timeouts noted for pine, but there is no further information. Thank you for your attention to this.
If someone has time, could they please test LINKS access to www.google.com and attempt to "sign on" (even if you do not have an account). The link is https and the failure reports "no route to host." LYNX still attempts to access old server proxy? Making HTTP connection to 216.93.104.35 ? Any information on this ? Thanks (everyone).
BTW, for better or worse, my filled up mailbox, which I can't access *still* due to the /tmp quota, keeps increasing in size. So incoming messages continued to be added to it, even though admonition messages seem to imply that they won't be.
Could someone please kill the pgreen and erica accounts? I type bbs and get 'I don't understand "pgreen" and (no conf). Fronttalk works but I still get this message and one about erica, 2x each.
I have now confirmed that LINKS cannot access any https links; can this feature be activated/toggled ? Hope someone can help when there is time.
When I do r n and there are new responses, using fronttalk, it automatically scrolls to the last page so I lose the first part unless I scroll back up. I don't recall this happening before - vandalism? NOt that I have been using ft until now.
That's what happens when you use less as your pager and you run a twit filter.
The problem is that the "twit filter" line in your .cfonce has been broken into three lines. Rejoin it into one and your problem whould go away. Killing other people's accoutns will do nothing to make the error you are seing go away.
Thanks, that fixed it. I would not need to edit .cfonce with pico -w if the twits did not have multiple personalities. How did you figure this out? Is there some way to read the last response in an item if it is not new, other than r, q, then the number of the last response?
Thanks to Joe-of-staff for addressing my mailbox problem.
Thanks, Joe!
The dial-ins are still giving me "This is NOT Grex...".
I used "less" on your .cfonce, Sindi. In picospan, I use "r X new" and then "-1". In FrontTalk, I use "r X nor" and then "-1".
Thanks, joe!
Is anyone else unable to telnet or ssh to grex today? (I cannot reach sdf either).
I reached grex eventually but cannot FTP upload to grex and the telnet lag is awful. top does not reveal any problems.
I'm here via ssh.
The system seems REALLY slow, but I don't know what's causing it. Could it be someone consuimg a lot of resources?
Speed problem is fixed, thanks.
I cannot do an ftp download. All I see is S. A few days ago I could not do an ftp upload. I am a member with ftp privileges.
Yes, a vandal wass running a fork-bomb. 'Twas killed at or about 08:56. (Which the observant will note is the time Sindi reported her dial-in attempt failing. Correlation is not causation, but . . . ;)
Sindi also emailed staff shortly after the dial-in failed and the telnet succeeded but was 89 load average. Should I bother reporting vandals or does staff notice them anyway? I tried again to dial in just now and got Welcome to grex. It may take a few seconds to connect...... And after a minute or so I gave up. ssh connected instantly.
You need more patience. The modems are still on the far side of the DSL.
This response is made by sshing from my machine to oldGrex and then from oldGrex to Grex. So it passes over the old, flakey DSL twice. It is, as should be expected, quite slow. A good way to learn patience. :)
As if we have not had enough practice with patience in the past couple of months! Telnet is not bad now.
Are there plans to move the dialin lines to the colo site, or will they be dropped when the lease expires on the Pumpkin?
I'll be faxing the information to transfer the lines to the telephone company later today. I am sorry that this has taken so long. :(
From one who is "spoiled" by SiteScope in the workplace: Is there enough spare grex hardware lying around to construct a "monitor" box whose sole purpose would be to monitor grex and when it detects something irregular (such as no response within a reasonable period) to notify whomever it would be willing to be so notified?
My arrow keys still do not work in fronttalk with my 84-key keyboard (or probably with the 101-key keyboard either). Yes it said Fronttalk (it scrolled by too quickly to read anything else) when I typed ft and I do not have a scroll buffer in linux except in vga and I am using mda.
I see robocop is running now. Or was running. Things just speeded up.
When scribbling a recent response that wasn't very interesting:
Respond, pass, forget, quit? scribble 23
Segmentation fault
grex%
I've got "limit coredumpsize 0" set in my .tcshrc, so no core file
(not that anyone would have time to track it down..) Is there a
problem with the perms on the censored log, perhaps?
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pine didn't start for me after 2 minutes
This looks like a problem: PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND 25997 r3- I 0:00.61 ./psybnc 25353 r3- I 0:00.63 ./psybnc 21795 r3- I 0:00.58 ./psybnc 5143 r3- I 0:00.55 ./psybnc 27215 r3 Is 0:00.02 -bash (bash) 24250 r3 I+ 0:00.41 pico index2.html
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Grex ssh worked last night but this morning: remote host failed or refused to allocate a pseudo tty. (A bunch more lines and then a blinking cursor).
Now I could ssh and login but then 'unable to find your tty (ttyr4) in utmp file. Things seem to be working okay anyway.
Lynx is working, ridiculously fast! I keep overshooting. But ftp (for members) is not working with lynx.
I don't find it too surprising that ftp doesn't work within lynx; lynx isn't linked to the necessary wrapper.
When I ssh here 'unable to find your tty in utmp' again but it works. Ftp has not been working in the browsers for a while now and I hope it can be fixed soon so that I will not have to exit lynx to use ftp once I find the directory I am interested in getting a file from - last night it was a modem upgrade file from usr that I could not access on my own slower connection (it took so long that lynx on my computer started to look for www.usr.com.edu). I can ftp between my computer and grex now.
I mention this because I don't know whether something was done since the last
mention (but if it was, it didn't work):
I just got
mesg: Unable to find your tty (ttyq6) in utmp file
when logging in.
Sindi slipped in, with probably the same problem (with mesg).
Just as another data point, I'm still receiving the type of error when
ssh'ing into grex that is described in resp:614 and others, above. Here
is the oddly formatted text that is written to the screen when this happens:
<pasted>
Server refused to allocate pty
Warning: no access to tty (Bad file descriptor).
Thus no job control in
this shell.
stty: mesg: I/O stream 2 improperly redirected
not a terminal
stty: not
a terminal
tset: standard error: Inappropriate ioctl for device
stty: not a terminal
mesg: I/O stream 2 improperly redirected
watch: Could not identify your terminal
</paste>
Note: this error doesn't always happen but when it does it seems
impossible to ssh at all.
I would appreciate any explanation as to why this occurs, still. On the
old Grex server, this would happen a lot and everytime someone asked,
we'd get the pat explanation that "just wait until next Grex; all these
problems will go away."
Thank you for your attention to this matter, volunteers.
whuddup -bash-2.05b$ w wing21 7:44PM up 6 days, 23:58, 16 users, load averages: 0.78, 0.83, 0.80 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT wing21 ft 200.175.43.115.d Sat10PM 0 - wing21 ft 200.175.43.115.d Sat09PM 0 - wing21 ft 200.175.43.115.d Sat10PM 0 -
I thought he mentioned it somewhere above, but perhaps folks missed it: OpenBSD doesn't write information to the utmp file as quickly as it could. So things that look at utmp, like mesg, during login sometimes fail. So Jan added a one-second retry to mesg. Sometimes, even that one second isn't enough. Personally, I've taken to running the mesg command from my .login by hand when I see that message, figuring that by the time I can enter commands by hand utmp has been updated. On oldGrex, the "failure to allocate pty" error was caused by the telnet queue. NewGrex doesn't have the telnet queue, so we didn't expect to have the "failure to allocate pty" error. However, sometimes no ptys are available, with the result reported in #621 above and elsewhere. Right now, we don't know why ptys aren't available. We have tried increasing the number. We've not stopped investigating the problem.
This would be a really low priority item compared to all of the rest, but is there any chance of upping the time limit you are given to authenticate before ssh times out? The old grex used to be quite generous in this regard, now I find that if I start ssh and switch to another window I often run into the limit before switching back.
Any progress on moving over the modems? We know at least one grexer with no other way to reach his mail, and he assumes it is now full of spam and bouncing all his real mail.
Well, let's see . . . Three modems (one a spare) are now at Provide.Net.
One is attached to grex. The other needs a different cable, because there
wasn't enough space for two DB25-DB9 adapters on grex's serial ports.
I borrowed a telephone cord from the Provide.Net people, to connect that modem
to the telco. (Amazingly, it hasn't been called yet. :)
I think we need to turn on the tty for the connected modem. I also think it
is on tty00. Unless I guessed wrong, in which case it is on tty01. I don't
know yet if turning it on will require a reboot. Whether it does or no, I'm
going to turn on both at the same time.
Before my next visit to Provide.Net, I need to get:
two 25-foot telephone cords
A DB9-DB9 serial cable, preferrably male-female.
The last could be replaced by a DB9F-DB25M serial cable.
BTW, a serial-to-USB adapter at Radio Shack was $41.xx, just a little more
than a new, external USB modem.
Don't buy at Radio Shack! Try Best Buy, CompUSA, and the next Gibraltar Trade Center computer show. Or local computer stores.
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We have a serial to USB adaptor that could be donated to grex if the serial ports cannot be made to work, and probably a few long phone cords. We have at least two spare 9F-25M modem cables and Kiwanis probably has 9-9s (I am using our only one with a newer modem that needs it). Give us a call (see Deigert in the phone book) if you want these tomorrow.
I am dialed into grex!!!!! No telnet lag. I had last tried about 7 pm and it just rang and rang. We have one 9-9/25 modem cable that grex can at least borrow until we find another at Kiwanis. Jim says he can make whatever length phone cords are needed - he has a tool and the ends to put on with it. We have some 9-pin female to 25-pin male (computer to modem) that grex is welcome to keep as we know we can get more of these at Kiwanis. Joe, what time are you going to provide.net tomorrow? Yippe!!!!!
I can even ssh from grex to somewhere else after dialing in.
I don't know that I will go tomorrow, much as I'd like to. When I went over this evening, I got lucky: some other folks had just arrived and were calling to be let in. Had they not been there, I'd have not been able to get in. While access is available 8am-10pm, it's not automatic. I'll poke around my own basemenet first. I know I have some long telephone cords, and I have the means to make more, too.
Why am I logged in from -? I think it used to be 'groovy'. Does this reflect the change from a computer to a serial port?
632 slipped in. Joe, let us know about modem cables. I have a long and a short ready for you (F/M).
Yes, "-" reflects the absence of the terminal server. I'll let you know, one or the other, later tonight, Sindi.
I'd like to make sure that someone who is NOT a member can't ssh out, too. (I expect that they can't.)
getting an error message that says "write failed, file system is full" uh oh
however I got that error in party, if the file system really is full, why can I still post on agora?
ditto #637
ditto #charcat's mom
Re #638: When it says "file system", think "disk partition". Grex's disks are multi-partitioned. Party and bbs use different partitions for writing data. None of the partitions are full now, so someone must've taken care of the problem.
I just tried to dial in again and got a long wait and a NO CARRIER.
With only one modem on a two-line hunt group, unanswered calls aren't too surprising. We can also expect busy signals the first week of dial-in access: A lot of demand has been dammed up; the flood won't be pleasant. ;/ But neither will (should) it be long. :)
I have not been able to dial grex since 10 pm last night. I just checked, nobody else is dialed in. It dials, makes some noises, then dials again, then disconnects. Has anyone else dialed in today? I tried at least 5 times.
Yeah, looks liek there's a problem. I'll check on it tomorrow, after I visit Kiwanis.
I was able to dial in this morning, but melanief was not, and in the afternoon neither of us could dial in. Trying now - the phone seems to be answered, but there is no connection beep.
No luck this morning for me (Monday). The Kiwanis visit is because a grexer who runs the computer/electronic dept. there has some ideas about how better to set up the modems with twisted-pair phone cable instead of 25' phone cords to eliminate interference and resulting problems. He is totally dependent upon grex dialins for internet access so has a strong interest in getting this working soon. Joe, thanks again for all your time.
Twisted pair *is* better than flat cord, for avoiding interference. CAT3 is often used for phone wiring.
I keep getting this error: login as: naftee naftee@grex.org's password: Server refused to allocate pty
I don't know why ptys aren't being allocated; we only had 26 users on. I went with flat cord for now; 'twas available.
re #649 DITTO
Re. 650: it's because people are breeding too quickly. :( (also remember that people can use up ptys merely by telneting in. they don't actually have to enter their username and password.)
Thanks, I am dialed in now. Why did you need to turn off grex to plug in the modems?
I still can't dial in. The modem tries to connect - I get the beep and the answering beep, then some transmission noise, and then a higher beep which never stops. The connection is never completed. Joe, are these two of the same modems that we were using before? Did you change any settings?
I had that problem for a while at work. Some modems just couldn't dial in to our modem -- they'd start the handshake and never complete it, with the same sort of high-pitched beep. I switched to a more expensive modem, one meant for dialin use, and that solved it. (Specifically, I switched from a $50 US Robotics Sportster to a $300 US Robotics Courier. Sportsters are strictly consumer-grade modems, and not very good ones at that, as it turns out.)
Re: #653. I assume because the modems in question are not plugged into serial ports, but into the expansion ports at the back of the computer, which require you to take the case off to get at, and turn the power off to avoid shorting the motherboard. If this is the case, then frankly, I'm amazed that any recent PCI modems have been found that aren't those accursed WinModem things, which, as the name suggests, are crippled to only work with That Other OS. This is done by moving most of the (already limited) intelligence of modems into proprietary modem driver software written for Windows, and distributed without source code. It serves Microsoft's purposes because it makes them hard (but not impossible! 8D) to use with Linux, et al., and serves the purposes of the manufacturers because it makes them cheaper to produce whilst slightly raising profit margins. Thankyou Microsoft, thankyou very bloody much. I don't think. (As an aside, reading, in Knoppix Hacks, about the limitations of the Windows Recovery CD made me think of a brilliant strategy for punishing Microsoft for their illegal behaviour towards other OS and application vendors: They should simply be forced to use their own OS.)
Re resp:656: I'm pretty sure Grex is using external modems, unless something has changed.
Interesting. Perhaps then turning Grex off was just to be on the safe side. Only Joe can enlighten us, really.
http://www.safesideforjesus.org/
re #659...we seem to have a problem with certain users or user posting fake url's. A user posting fake url's is purposely posting bad information on the system. Which in turn cause people who come here to see these links and hit on them. If grex is full of posts with bad url links, it makes grex itself look bad. IMO staff does not need to be condoning such activity.
Primarily, I turned grex off because I wanted to plug it into the powerstrip I have the modems plugged into. When I went in on Saturday, I plugged the powerstrip in to the UPS. It just made sense to me to have everything plugged into the powerstrip. These are the GVC external modems we were using at the Pumpkin.
if this is the case, we must first as ourselves, why are people hitting on links instead of on buns? a neoclassical formulation would b e: because they're women! but this was busted up by the implicationf of implied homosexuality in the work of anciebnt greek scholars combined with the people who supported "greek life". so, the next formulation was: because they'er women and abnormal men! this held true until the famous french midget jaques derrida came along and DECONSTRUCTED the idea of gender, positing that women were the euqal and opposite reaction (i.e. social newtonianism) and that this allowed us to bust up the gender binary, and come up with he current forulation: some PEOPLE like hitting on lin ks, some like hitting on buns, some don't like hitting on either, and some like hitting on both. needless to say, richard shoulod be ashamed of his discriminatory/sexist/genderbinaryist views of hitting on links.
What?!
deliberately posting a bad link on grex on purpose should be seen as just as bad as deliberately posting bad code on grex. Or deliberately posting any sort of information known beforehand to be bad on grex. It is corrupting the quality of the bbs. Grex should pride itself on the quality of its posts, and that means staff taking action when it sees users deliberately and purposely posting bad information repeatedly.
Re #661 - something must have changed, because I could connect to the Pumpkin but I can't connect to Grex in its new home. Nothing's changed on my end except the phone number I'm dialing. It does sound like there's a little bit of line noise, but I wouldn't think that'd be enough to cause a problem. BTW Joe - do these lines hunt? I.e., if I dial 0512, and it's busy, will I be forwarded to 0513? Also, the !phones command needs to be updated.
The 'phone company tells me they hunt. The phones script is updated.
http://www.richardscrusade.org/
Re #664: Richard, don't feed the troll!
I tried just now and could not connect via dialing. I might have been using a different computer earlier when I connected. I have mostly USR Sportsters flashed from x2 to v90. This one is a 28.8K.
When I get back I could try to dig up my old Newton-based modem configuration.
re resp:664: Grex should pride itself on the quality of it's posts? Do you read most of the responses? The URL postings are below average in creativity and information content but they are hardly the bottom of the barrel here. Just filter the author, as I do. Then you don't have to worry about them any more.
you filter?
He's a backtalk user.
filters are for pussies.
picospan still segvs when I scribble a response.
Re. 674: AHAH< AND FOR CUNTS
HAHAHA>LOL
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I can't run Pine because (I think) Grex is unable to find my terminal in the utmp file. What does that mean?
Re resp:664: Honestly, I think staff has better things to do than censoring people's posts.
Caveat re resp:678 - Fronttalk is beta, so expect some rough edges if you use it. However, Jan's been putting a lot of work into it recently and it's getting to be in good shape. There's an item in the Garage conference to discuss Fronttalk bugs and features (item:garage,5).
I can't dial or telnet to grex now.
So far, only the first modem has been used.
Telnet and ssh both work for me. I want to get some cat3 telephone cable. I have cat5, but I don't think that will work for telephone. Of course, I could put two jacks on each end of the cat5, instead of one, and use one cable for both modems. :)
:)
CAT5 will work fine. It's just more expensive. CAT3 and CAT5 both have four twisted pairs (eight conductors), incidentally -- CAT5 just allows for more bandwidth. In either case it's just a matter of crimping the right connectors on the ends (or attaching the right jacks, as the case may be). For best noise rejection, don't "split pairs" -- use two wires from the cable that are twisted around each other for the phone line. Only the two center conductors of a phone connector actually do anything, on a single-line phone, and in fact you'll find a lot of commercial phone cords only have two wires. So, for a single-line phone, the connector would look like this: --AA-- (Where - is empty, and A are wires from one pair of the cable.) For a two-line phone, it would look like this: -BAAB- (Where A is from one pair, and B is from another.) Incidentally, the two wires that are used on a phone connector correspond with the two unused positions on a 10baseT ethernet connector. I suspect this is to help protect ethernet equipment from damage when some clueless person accidentally plugs a phone line into it.
Hmm. I just found this website that probably explains it in a less confusing way than I just did: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.html
Jim and Kiwanis probably have this cable.
Kiwanis did not.
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, ethernet wiring, iirc, is *not* wired correctly for telephone use. oh, wait, that is incorrect since polarity no longer matters to the modern phone newtwork. this applies to 4-conductor cable. gull's #686 is correct for phones, single-pair and two-pair.
It's true that ethernet wiring isn't quite the same as phone wiring, but the cable itself is fine -- the difference is in how the ends are attached. You're going to have to change the ends anyway, unless your phone stuff has RJ-45 jacks on it. (Which isn't unheard of, mind you, but it's rare.) There are still some things out there that care about polarity, though you're unlikely to run into them. I found out the hard way this week that polarity matters a lot to DID lines. Ended up making a custom cable for a new fax modem because the jack at work was wired backwards, to compensate for some old equipment that was also wired backwards. DID lines are their own special nastiness, though; take everything about how phone signalling normally works and stand it on its head, and you have a good idea how a DID line is set up.
having no luck at dialing in on the new number I listened in while dialing and heard the recording "you must dial a 1 and the area code" does this meen the call is now long distance for us western washtenaw users? If so I'm upset. It basicaly makes my other computer and my mother's useless. Why couldn't we keep and ann arbor phone?
Leslie/arabella's .login file doesn't run when she logs in. This broke with the migration to the new machine. The commands in the file all seem to run fine if she types "source .login" I can't figure out what's different between her setup and mine; my .login has always run as expected.
How many hours a month do you normally dial in to grex from those two computers? Access-4-free offers ten free hours/month internet access from which you could telnet ($5 signup fee). And I ran across one long distance phone company which was under 3 cents/minute within MI. I had no idea Ypsi was a long distance call from Chelsea.
ypsi is long distance for Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester I'm not sure about Saline.
Is ypsi at least local for some towns that Ann Arbor is not, east of ypsi? Steve, do you have a dsl line at your usual computer and if so, does this mean you cannot also dial in to the isp from other locations? I suspect another friend in Chelsea is going to drop her grex membership if she has to pay for an ISP to reach her mail here. If the old number is forwarding, is that original number still a local call from Chelsea? That would at least give people 90 days of free calls while they found another way to access mail. I still cannot dial in to grex. Worked right after the modems were reinstalled but not since then.
I looked at some login files:
drwxr-xr-x 30 root wheel 512 Dec 28 01:17 /a
drwxr-xr-x 38 root wheel 512 Jul 16 2001 /a/k
drwxr-xr-x 38 root wheel 512 Jul 16 2001 /a/a
drwxr-xr-x 46 root wheel 1024 Feb 8 16:53 /a/k/r
drwxr-xr-x 63 root wheel 1024 Feb 1 14:35 /a/a/r
drwxr-xr-x 10 krj people 9728 Feb 9 00:44 /a/k/r/krj
drwxr-xr-x 3 arabella people 3072 Feb 9 00:36 /a/a/r/arabella
-rw-r--r-- 1 krj people 712 Dec 28 23:19 /a/k/r/krj/.login
-rw-r--r-- 1 arabella people 333 Feb 9 00:16 /a/a/r/arabella/.login
Just wondering if some protection was different somewhere in the
paths. Making the .login executable might be worth the trouble.
I have a very dim memory, of the hash mark "#" as the
first char on the first line of a script, in some cases,
for some shells, also making a difference *on the second line*.
I can't find any corroboration but it's worth a try.
I'm having a problem in that when I log in on occasion, it treats all items in Winter like a brand new item. Is this due to rebooting or what, and how can I fix it? Or more importantly, how much of a bribe to get a staff member to fix it for me?
If there are enough members who need local access to grex, we might be able to justify the expense of having some sort of call forwarding from Ann Arbor.
How are the new phone lines working for dial-in users who've tried 'em? My modem can't seem to connect (endless training tones) and it sounds like the lines have fairly bad static.
I was just able to dial in now. Instant connection once the modem stopped making noises.
Disk quotas are too low on /tmp; I can't even gzip a dump and put it there temporarily to download.
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resp #696 yes the old number was a local call. I don't know why I'm so upset about this, I can use the internet to connect from my home computer but I know 2 people who can't. How much extra would it cost grex to keep an ann arbor phone or call forwarding?
I don't know, but I can probably find out how much it would cost to set up
permanent forwarding. I'll try to call SBC tomorrow.
One difference between ~krj/.login and ~arbella/.login is:
if ($?prompt) then
. . .
endif
I don't know that that is the problem, though.
I was able to dial in last night, but not this morning. melanief called to tell me she still can't connect. Joe, I think some of the GVC modems were suspect, and we had the best of them in service before the move. Are the two that are connected now from the pool of modems that were in use before, or were they idle?
I could not dial in this morning either. Steve, are you using dialin service to your ISP or broadband? If broadband, don't ISPs also let you dialin as well so you can connect when away from home?
Can't speak for all, but Comcast and WOW do not.
> WARNING: Your mailbox is 87% full. > If it reachs 100%, you will no longer be able to receive mail. It is my experience on nextgrex that this is not true: Due to being sent several large attachments at once and SPAM, I know I've well exceeded the inbox limit (still 1MB?), and yet have been able to receive more mail. That has proven to be very useful, as there was a time I couldn't run mail to clear out stuff, due to the low /tmp quota, yet this didn't start bouncing mail to senders. OTOH, if the inbox limit isn't enforced, that could allow a big pile up of junk sent to defunct accounts etc.
I got 'network not supported' first time I tried to ssh here, then the second time it worked. Is this something to do with where I am ssh'ing from? Still cannot dial in.
The modems are from the active pool. Last I looked, the mail quota was 5MB.
Dial-in/modems/problems: What i'm hearing definitely sounds like continuous, bad line noise. I've no problems (& don't hear line noise) dialing other places. Dunno...i'd say it must be in the trunk line (vs. "last mile") from what folks are saying, but i'd also thought that noisy trunk lines were a thing of the past.
Could the noise be from using 25' phone cords? I still can't dial in either. It has worked twice in the past few days.
Possible, especially if the cord is bundled up.
> Last I looked, the mail quota was 5MB. At the time I was given the "100% full" message yesterday, I'm pretty sure I had nowhere near 5MB worth of mail in the inbox.
You probably know this, but
ls -l /var/mail/<loginid>
will show the size of <loginid>'s inbox.
Jim offers to put together a regular phone cable that will plug into the phone jack at one end and have two jacks for SHORT phone lines at the other end (or perhaps the cable could plug directly into two modems? - how far apart are they?). But first he has to recover from the flu as he cannot do this too well while in bed.
weird here ....
grex% w
3:52PM up 3 days, 9:40, 36 users, load averages: 1.08, 0.86, 0.84
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT
volt p0 tran.adsl.mustan 2:59PM 5 -tcsh
politie p1 gn-lwb-5c43.adsl 3:49PM 0 (pine)
cross p3 sl-aafes1-40-0.s 2:42PM 4 -tcsh
tsty p4 pcp03303701pcs.y 3:45PM 0 w
jvmv p5 200-203-131-127. 3:16PM 0 gate /c/j/v/jvmv/cf.buffer
smoke p7 ACD89C61.ipt.aol 3:51PM 1 -bash
jn p8 port1364.ds1-by. 3:48PM 1 -bash
gudri p9 - 3:30PM 0 /usr/local/bin/bbs
vallica pa 81.12.221.23 3:23PM 0 -bash
test19 pb pcp745288pcs.res 3:10PM 0 vi testing.txt
unix22 pc dup-200-65-13-13 3:36PM 8 vi copiar
cross pd sl-aafes1-40-0.s 3:46PM 0 screen -r
cross pe fubar.cshack.net Wed09AM 0 vi minunit.h
marcvh pf c-24-18-218-42.c 3:27PM 15 -bash
frank60 q0 130.182.168.175 2:45PM 0 -bash
aym q1 130.182.168.209 2:46PM 0 /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/help
radi q2 83.238.4.98 3:46PM 0 lynx
steve q4 pcp04149896pcs.s 12:01AM 0 -sh
q76 q5 user6.47.udn.pl 3:51PM 0 -bash
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
hackerpt ft bl6-11-28.dsl.te Fri05PM 0 -
grex%
plus ...............
grex% f -m hackerpt
Login: hackerpt Name: hackerpt
Directory: /a/h/a/hackerpt Shell: /bin/bash
On since Fri Feb 11 17:04 (EST) on ftp13449 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:08 (EST) on ftp10539 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:08 (EST) on ftp1084 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp3456 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp21571 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp21872 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp15683 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp17847 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp4871 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp26602 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp440 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp24252 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp25520 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp19024 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp14084 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:09 (EST) on ftp19333 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
On since Fri Feb 11 17:14 (EST) on ftp16240 (messages off)
from bl6-11-28.dsl.telepac.pt
No Mail.
No Plan.
seems to be stuck somehow ...
portugal has arrivedd
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What a crock.
This response has been erased.
An update on the modems: I didn't get a chance to call SBC on Thursday or Friday. I did find 140 feet of cat5 cable in my basement. I _couldn't_ find my crimper, so I plan to buy a new one tomorrow, make a couple of cat5 telephone cords of appropriate length, and then get to Provide.Net to install them. The last step may not happen until Monday, though.
whip me up a batch of pancakes, cross.
Jim has a crimper you can borrow, also some of the round grey cable normally used to run phone lines, whatever it happens to be. I think his idea was to make one line with something at the end to plug two phone cords into. Or if the modems are fairly close, perhaps he can make something that plugs directly into the modems (soldered instead of plugged, better contact).
Splitters, which can be added to the end of an ordinary phone cord, are "dirt cheap". It isn't worth the time to make custom cords.
It's telling me that my mailbox is 98% full, when I have just over one megabyte of mail in it. Furthermore, for the last several days it has refused to let me delete anything (if I was able to read it at all) because I was over quota in /temp. Yesterday and today, also getting the incredible line noise that won't let me dial in.
(To add to #726, as one who watched and tried to help:
(1) On dialin, the modem connects, but it gets what appears to be continuous,
severe line noise, never a visible dialin prompt of any kind. As with
others who have reported this, the only difference on our end is the
number being dialed.
(2) Grace was able to use elm to read her mail, but when she exited, if she'd
made any changes (deleted any messages), it told her that her limit was
exceeded on /tmp. To add insult to injury, or maybe more injury, it left
the original copy of her mailbox in /tmp, blocking future attempts to even
run elm. That limit needs to be at least doubled, I'm afraid.
(3) Her problems with elm were greatly exacerbated by the amount of spam Grex
is letting in. The mailbox keeps getting bigger & bigger, but the limit
on /tmp won't let her delete any of it.
Is it possible to hand-edit the mailbox? Or maybe to download it first and then read it and delete it at grex? Please try my .forward and .procmailrc as a filter - just the first 20 filters (and the first and last three lines or so) of .procmailrc are needed and change keesan to davel or gracel.). My long filter catches 95% of spam but the first 20 parts should do about 90%. A quarter or so of my spam is sent to one of about ten other grex addresses in a batch mailing, most of the rest has java or images or a few key words like medication.
yahoo email is free.
I get lots of spam with header 'To:': benny, amit, ebsy, eh, kleptic, krex, makji and hal9000, none of whom exist at grex. Could someone set up a systemwide procmail filter on these? (I also get spam addressed to at least 6 currently active grexers). Putting Subject:...prescripiton and Subject:...taladafil and X-Message-Info, img.src, and java would catch at least half of the rest of the spam. Does anyone WANT to get emails with these at grex? In my case at least nobody but spammers writes me about medications or meds, but maybe some people discuss those with their friends, along with cumshots and mortgage refinancing.
Any about cumshot refinancing?
Just a heads-up: I'm not going to get to Provide.Net today. :(
I got there today. My Cat5 cable contained two eight-conductor cables: one blue and one yellow. I put an RJ-11 connector at each end of each of them (leaving four wires unused in each cable) and put that in place of the separate telephone cords we had been using. So that part of the problem should be fixed. I also plugged a telepone directly into the test jacks: one (0512) was dead, and the other (0513) was so noisy that the telephone wouldn't dial through. I called SBC from another line in the facility to report the problem. They promised by repair by tomorrow evening. That should take care of the second part of the problem. Since only one line was working, 0513, and only tty00 has been used, I changed the order of the modems so that 0512 would be on tty00 and 0513 would be on tty01. Now we wait for the lines to be fixed to see if I fixed that part of the problem, as well.
Thanks a lot Joe. I hope SBC will also refund us the charges for the period when the lines were not usable. I look forward to dialing in again. Maybe then I will be able to print out my email again? When I try (with % or with Y after enabling that), the file just scrolls across the screen but does not print to 'attache-to-ansi' - or maybe I simply don't know how to print in linux, though I did insmod three modules - parport, parport_pc and lp - do I also need lpr? Normally I just dial in with DOS and kermit.
My experience with SBC is that you should expect it to take several tries to get a reliable line. Hopefully they'll do a better job for you, though.
Ok, once again when I logged on, it showed all the items in the winter agora as being brand new. What's up with that?
I've been out of town, and unable to telnet in, for several days. Just now, when I logged in, I was told (quite understandably) that my mailbox was full, and that I would not be able to receive any more mail until I removed some of it. So - wait for it - I tried to read my mail and was told that /tmp was full, and my quota was exceeded! There is no way I can read any mail. Would someone with a clue *puh-leez* increase the disk quotas for mail so that I (and others) can read it? Thanx!
Thanks Joe, for dealing with the modems.
Thanks Mark!
Grex won't let me save changes to the HTML version of a conf login.html file
dpc is suffering the same thing I went through, until my /tmp quota was increased. Is this how it's going to be - one by one, affected users have to ask for help to solve something they could have solved for themselves?
Do you have spam filters?
A short spam filter that catches about 75% of my spam -
delete lines starting in #, which I put in for information only.
.forward (in home directory):
|/usr/local/bin/procmail
.procmailrc (in home directory):
MAIL=/var/mail/yourlogin ##change this!!!
LOGFILE=$HOME/mail/from
VERBOSE=on
##The above sets your mail directory and produces a logfile
##with a list of what mail went where and why -- ~/mail/from
##which you can read with pine, L, as 'from'. You can see if
##the filter caught a real mail and why, then either put the
##mailer on your white list or remove the filter that caught it.
## This first filter forwards mails over 100K to my other address.
:0:
* >100000
! keesan@myotheraddress.org
#The next two are 'white list', mail to be let through:
#Change from carole to the names of people who write you
#if your filter catches their mail.
:0:
* ^From:.*carole
$MAIL
#Change to subjects that you want to be sure not to accidentally filter
:0:
* ^Subject:.*ebay
$MAIL
#This filter lets through mail from people using pine.
:0:
* ^References:.*pine
$MAIL
#The following is a sample of how to filter on mails with word
# 'filter' in message body and send them to mail folder filter.
# Useful if you want to save mail from a list.
:0B:
* ^*filter
${HOME}/mail/filter
#The rest of this throws out (to /dev/null) spam.
#All mail with java in it is spam.
:0:
* ^Content-type:.*java
/dev/null
#I don't know what this is, but it is always spam.
:0:
* ^X-Message-Info:
/dev/null
#All mail with embedded images is spam.
:0B:
* ^.*img.src
/dev/null
#All mail sent to these characters is spam, unless you are carson.
:0:
* ^To:.*benny
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*carson
/dev/null
:0:
* ^From:.*carson
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*cme
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*gmike
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*hal9000
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*krex
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*makji
/dev/null
:0:
* ^To:.*pez
/dev/null
:0:
* ^Cc:.*true
/dev/null
:0:
* ^Subject:.*medication
/dev/null
#perscription, prescripiton
:0:
* ^Subject:.*p..scrip..on
/dev/null
:0:
* ^Subject:.*\|
/dev/null
## The following lines (0B) filter on message bodies only:
##The first will catch cialis, c!ial1s, etc.
:0B:
* ^.*c.al.s
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*deals
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*medication
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*meds
/dev/null
#the . is any character, the ? means character before it is optional
# so this catches mortgage, mor.tg.agge etc.
:0B:
* ^*mor.?tg.?agg?e
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*pills
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*\%.rate
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*refinance
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*rx
/dev/null
:0B:
* ^.*s0ft
/dev/null
#leave the next line so real mail will arrive safely
:0:
$MAIL
That's fine, but one's mailbox filling up isn't always about SPAM: Friends could send you several large file attachments, and that would do it.
That is why I started the filter with a section that forwards large mails to some other address. You could also just set the filter to send the large mails to /dev/null if you don't have a forwarding address. I added this filter (with much help from mcnally) after a friend sent me a 700K photo (which she following with 1.3 and 1.4MB). See the line with 1000 in it.
I think it'd be better to fix the underlying problem, which is that the /tmp quota is apparently smaller than the mailbox quota.
SBC is at Provide.Net working on the lines now. Apparently, the problem is extensive; they hope to get it fixed tonight, but if they can't, they'll be back on it first thing in the morning. Right now, the lines are ringing open.
Thanks for the update, Joe. I wonder what the problem was? Bad wires, I suppose.
"Bad dates"
They have to replace the cable and will be out tomorrow to finish the job.
Thanks to whoever fixed my /tmp quota!
I've now reset the quotas on /tmp for all users who have logged in since the middle of December (Dec 19 14:45 2004, to be precise). I've also set newuser to assign the new quota to any new users.
I note that there were a couple of connections on tty01 today, before SBC took the lines down for repair. So I did get the modems connected to the 'right' lines this time. :)
Thanks again Joe. Clever of you not to assign new quotas to non-using users who would just get more spam. Today my abridged spam filter posted above caught 13 of my 15 spams that arrived since midnight: 3 X-message, 3 img.src, 1 java, 2 medication, 2 meds, 1 pills, 1 prescripiton, also (using the longer filter) a generic.drug and a To: true. Before I rearranged the order of filters half of the spams were caught because of the To: line. It is interesting how most of my current spam is due to our lack of national health insurance or care.
I think SBC has finished the work on our telephone lines.
I've got a "system non-problem" to report. Typically I get at least 50 spam e-mails per day. This morning there were only 5 spams. And just now I checked, and I have received *no* mail at all! What happened? Did someone connect a spam filter?
I tried to send an e-mail (from within Pine) and failed on three successive attempts. The third time I noticed a briefly flashed message in the status line at the bottom, something about "Error 451, error writing spool file, mail not sent." (not an exact quote.)
Make that: [Mail not sent. Sending error: 451 Error while writing spool file]
Probable cause: /dev/sd2d 6092380 6069840 -282078 105% /var
yep, just got /var: write failed, file system is full
in party
There are some overgrown log files in /var/log that could probably be rotated and compressed to help alleviate the crunch.
I dialed in! Thanks Joe, for dealing with SBC.
Thanks aruba!
Thanks, Jim!
Thanks, by the way!
Thanks, naftee!
Thanks, EVERYBODY!
Yeah!
someone please fix it, so I can save changes to the graphics and photo conf login.html files
I have been dialing in since last night.
I'm not familiar with that file, so I can't help, eprom. Drop a line to either cfadm@cyberspace.org or staff@cyberspace.org.
I can't telnet to grex, but ssh works. Telnet is failing from different machines in different places.
Yep, cannot reach cyberspace.org via telnet. This is being posted via backtalk (web).
This morning someone originally from Samarkand sent me a tel asking if I was admin (maybe because I was dialled in) and trying to say something about a problem with inetd and port settings. He was I think trying to let me know how to fix the problem so I asked him to explain to staff@. After which we discussed languages and cooking for 3 hours! Jews from Samarkand speak Bokhari as well as about 5 other local languages some of which I never heard of. His family was killed in the 90s and he escaped via Greece, where the local Uzbeks were threatening him so he came here and is doing something with software that he finds boring but which lets him chat all morning. Does Win98 have ssh capabilities? A friend just called to ask how she can access grex now that Chelsea is a long-distance call and telnet is dead. She has been sending in her dues faithfully and hoping grex would stabilize, silly girl.
You can download putty for win98.
same thing as marcvh noted a few hours ago. grex does not respond to telnet, and hasnt been responding to telnet all evening, but does respond to ssh (which Im on currently) and backtalk. why would this be happening?
Backtalk is crashing nastily for some reason, at least for anonymous access.
Unlike ssh and http, telnet is started out of inetd. For some reason, inetd was hosed. "kill -HUP" didn't help, so I killed it dead and restarted it.
Thanks Joe! Don't know what grex would do without you. My friend has no idea how to download Putty for Win98, or even what a file is. Someone set her up to dial provide.net and use telnet.
thanks keesan!
Heh, looks like provide.net will be getting a lot of business from Grexers now. Now if only I could get their "TurboConnect" to stop dropping calls on me...
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I just telnetted in no prob. Whoever fixtit: THANKS!
Re 783: See #778. Joe fixed things - as usual.
thanks tod!
THANKS JIM
/var is full again.
Next time any disk work is done, would it be possible to either increase the size of the /var partition above 3GB or to put /var/mail (or /var/spool/mail, or wherever OpenBSD puts it) on its own partition?
Slash var slash mail is on its own partition!
if you google putty download you'll get a page where you can download the small .exe. just run it.
re #789: you're right -- somehow I overlooked it before.. it'd still be nice to either have a bigger /var or have whatever keeps filling it up isolated elsewhere..
I got /var down to 67% full by moving stuff over to /grex/zcore. Hopefully i didn't screw too much up...
Re putty download, my friend has no idea how to download anything. We tried several times to teach her to download files from grex and gave up. She does not know what a file is. Or where the files are in the first place. I tried to draw pictures. Or how to run a program. We set her up to type grex in order to reach her email here with pine, after turning on the computer. Someone else managed to set her up with IE and telnet. I tried to explain how to change from white on black to black on white printing. She lives several hours bike ride from here and it is snowy out.
thanks, i!
party comes up with this message /var: write failed, file system is full
Yes, it's full again.
.
EOT
&
/var: write failed, file system is full
/var: write failed, file system is full
pre
& h
tough to send email wehn this happens ....
!date
Fri Feb 25 05:35:14 EST 2005
Ditto #792, /var's at 65% now.
still can't get backtalk to save configurations changes...can someone look into this????
yeah ?????
I think it's going to have to wait for Jan, Jeffrey.
Wow. And here I thought we'd be done with the whole 'disk full' thing for a while after getting the new system.
Latest problem is that seven of us were waiting for someone with a key to show up at the pumpkin. Jim and I walked to my apartment to clean out the yard so it will hold a desk and three big chairs. We can hold onto grex stuff for a month at most while people decide whether to pick anything up. Metal shelving, mounting rack, but mostly SUN stuff and maybe 3 mono monitors. A few phones. Don't know what the movers will keep.
GrexStand
The move went great, once the key issues was resolved (thanks Aruba!). I snagged my old 5-line office phone and several big Sun VME cards.
Scott, what are you going to do with the big cards? We had hoped to recycle
the rest of them but our neighbor stopped by to see if anything was worth
putting on eBay and informed us that Friedman's Nonferrous Metals Recycling
closed a month ago. There are rumors they may have opened a different place
in Ypsi, which is not much help to us.
We spent a few hours taking apart: 2 keyboards (cracked, missing
keys), 2 IBM PCs (one with a hard card, the other with 2 full-height floppy
drives), a 9600 bps external modem (Practical Peripherals), several drive
enclosures for full-height scsi drives, a 9-in TI printer. THe box of
diskette labels did not have an inventory number. We still have the previous
grex computer, lots of cards, some T1 stuff, something that you can plug about
10 modems into, two SPARC terminals, two Ann Arbor Ambassador dumb terminals,
three monitors that might be TTL with burnin, a Sparc keyboard, another
keyboard, a few smaller boxes we cannot yet identify, some wires, one internal
modem (14.4 or slower?), a 486 motherboard, and a desk and three big chairs
and maybe some shelving. Anyone want any of this? A Sparc mouse with three
elongated buttons, cute. Various metal plates that may have gone with the
rack that went to provide.net. We are wondering WHY grex kept some of the
above when it was over 20 years old.
We are putting the smaller metal pieces into the recycle bin but does
anyone know of a place that accepts ferrous metal and does not charge to take
it? (They used to pay, but we lost both local junkyards). Kiwanis takes its
computer stuff (and will take our monitors and terminals) to a place that pays
5 cents/pound - maybe they will come pick up our boards and larger cases.
We used to get about 15-20 cents/lb for 'greenboard'.
It should be a while until the home-directory partitions fill up. However, /var seems to be something else.
it's ur mom
Re #807:
I might have a use for the 9600 baud modem, as a backup for my 33.6K.
I took those VME cards for decorative purposes. :)
Drew, we recycled that modem but you are welcome to one of our 14.4K modems - internal or external. We also recycled most of our 14.4 externals and only kept 4-5. And about 10 internals.
It was pointed out to me by someone on my blog that when one clicks on links that are on Grex's home page (http://grex.cyberspace.org), you get a "back talk crash" Specifically, this happens when one clicks on the links to sample the conferences. Example: http://grex.cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/backtalk/peek:agora
Dude.b
A report from party is that FTP is not working for removing files from Grex. I tried it myself and got a timeout.
Is anyone planning to fix lynx, links and w3m so they can access ftp sites if you are a paying member of grex?
And hopefully also upgrade lynx to 2.8.5, which has been the latest stable version for a while now. Thanks.
Lynx 2.8.5 stable release came out Feb 2004 and they are now working on 2.9. 2.8.5 has a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements and some new features. Is there a precompiled version for OpenBSD?
OpenBSD 3.6 includes lynx 2.8.5rel2 - has grex upgraded to 3.6 yet? 3.5 includes lynx 2.8.4rel1. How often does a new OpenBSd come out?
calm down, keesan
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keesan demands complainace - immediately! her orders are issued! comply! oh, wait ..... envermind ,
follow her instructions ! ..
Picospan and Fronttalk seem to have a different idea of how many newresponse items I have in this conference. Pico says 151, FT says 21. FT is correct, I think. I've been reading the conferences mostly with Backtalk.
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Not quite. Soon, maybe.
i hope we still have link to picospan
Yes, you will still be able to run picospan, with the command "picospan".
Oh, cool! But I still haven't seen the self-destruction of picospan functionality with my own eyes, as reported in this item.
Yeah. That's bull-, and possibly horse-, shit.
I fully agree with scholar's mammalian dissertation.
While it was mammalian, the more specific theme I was going for was ungulate. But good try, man, good try.
Seeing as you do have hooved feet, I guess I forgot about your affinity for your cousin ungulata. Apologies.
Is it just me? Grex is timing out... :(
Timing out how? I note that it has been up since Saturday.
I just restarted inetd; apparently it was hung. It is possible that that was what was affecting FTP, too.
Re. #834: If by "timing out" you mean that Grex is (or was) not accepting telnet connections, no, it is not just you; you are not alone, which (nonfunctionality of telnet) necessitates my present access of the Agora via Backtalk.
"laston" is not working. Attempting to go to Backtalk via the cyberspace.org home page results in a Backtalk crash. Still. Weeks after the first notice. (How hard can this be to fix?)
are you the famous scholar r. k. sawyer jr.?! wow! hey, guys! this one isn't a fake!
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strange. 'laston' worked for me . . once. or twice.
then no more.
Gaston.
When was it laston? ;-)
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tell russ to stop arguing, then.
dude.
big guy.
Don't know if it counts as a "problem", exactly, but the help text for the
"Respond or Pass" prompt in pico contains a typo:
<integer> - <inteber> -- displays just that range of responses.
Also, 'STop' should probably only have one capital, unless it's being used
to indicate a shortcut in a way that none of the other items are.
On the bright side, there's no "teh" anywhere.
jiucy
Re. #839: Probably not, but if so, it's only because I'm a midget standing on the shoulders of giants, some of whom post in these fori.
Jim has me on his .yeswrite list for tels and talks but when I typed talk jdeigert 'your party is refusing messages'. Did we do something wrong? I just checked it. messages no (exceptions) - I am one of two. mode any bells yes. This should be in .login for jdeigert. He can request a talk with me but not vice versa. We are both telnetted in on the same connection over my new little network and we are sitting side by side and practicing 'talk'.
HE"S CHEATING ON YOU.
His .yeswrite file lists keesan.
but his penis says rebecca.
The only thing I can see that *might* cause trouble is the blank lines at the end of his .yeswrite. But that may not matter; I don't know.
If you count the number of blank lines you'll ascertain the length of his mistress' name.
When I get disconnected from Grex while I'm reading mail, and then reconnect ad go back to reading mail, Pine marks my mailbox as read-only, because it says it's open in another process. It has always done this, but lately it seems to take a really long time for it to stop doing it. Is that because the idle-zapper is taking a long time to kill my old login session? It's been idle for 57 minutes now, but still present. Can I kill it myself?
Yes, you should be able to kill it yourself. Try:
ps -auxwwww | grep aruba
to get the processid of the old pine session and then
kill <processid>
You may need to
kill -9 <processid>
Thanks! That worked.
Thanks aruba!
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Just letting someone who reads this know that the 'Computers & Staff' page has not been updated to reflect the new system (on Grex.org) Thank you
I'll never understand why Jan writes gobs and gobs of text on the abortion issue and the end of the oil era, but not on the new GreX machine :(
I've been getting increasing amounts of junk/spam email on my grex email. Has anyone else been getting a lot of junk email? Is it possible that some junk emailer is automatically targeting random grex addresses?
Jim has not received any at all so probably not.
I have no junk mail.
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What are you filtering on? I have not been receiving truncated fragments (first three lines of a header) recently. I just added a filter on X-RBL-Warning, which removes anything on the spamcop blacklist, which is about 1/3 of my spam or maybe more.
I think I've noticed a decrease, but I haven't really been keeping track.
You have several choices: