191 new of 281 responses total.
0512 is working - connected and has not yet disconnected.
Sounds like it's the modem, then. I wonder if we kept any.
AHAHAHAH< FEATURING JOE "GEL IN ASS" GELINAS
I spoke too soon. I got disconnected shortly afterwards, and then could not get back on - No Carrier twice when I tried. Someone else reported the same problem with this line and the other modem. Line noise? 0513 is said to just ring, and to not work from some locations in Ann Arbor. Could the phone company be persuaded to give us two different lines? My modem here just survived the thunderstorm by some miracle.
AHAHAHA< BUT YOUR PUBIC HAIR DIDN"T AHAHAHA< GUESS YOU DON"T HAVE TO SHAVE TODAY : IT"S ALL BURNT
The other grexer said 512 is working properly now but I asked him to describe exactly what was wrong before.
I don't see the last line of what I wrote above. I keep getting disconnected from 512 but I can at least dial back. A short file download showed that most of the packets had CRC errors - noisy line? (WCC connection is even deader than grex this weekend).
ahaha, /a is full
I moved several hundred accounts from /a to /c and did some other clean-up on /a. There's now about 550 Mbytes of free space on /a, which should last for a while (one hopes.) I'd meant to do this much sooner but there hasn't been an opportune time to do it. I'm in the process of a household move and my home computers have been packed up and put into storage until I work out where I'm going to wind up, and I can't really spare the time to do it from work -- short quick fixes from work are OK but although it's not that complex, moving several hundred homedirs and making sure that things still work properly afterwards still isn't something you want to do while in a rush. This weekend I finally borrowed a laptop from work and found some time to make the fix. So I'm sorry for the inconvenience it's caused in the meantime; I hope this will alleviate the /a crisis long enough for me to get settled in to my new living quarters where I'll have time to look into making a longer- term fix.
thanks for the new /c crowd, mike ! welcome, eprom !
Thanks, mike, and good luck with the new digs!
thanks, twenex, and welcome !
Mike, we love you! When can you start on a spam filter?
Realistically speaking, not until after I've moved, and only then after some thought about how to make it work simply and with minimal resource consumption. I'm disappointed by the disk consumption problem with using SpamAssassin with per-user Bayesian filtering. If we expect a lot of people to elect filtering I'd like to figure out a Better Way so that we can offer it as an opt-in item in newuser without having all the space we save by filtering out Spam eaten up by spamfilter token databases..
Forwarding to a gmail account has been flawless for me.
What I would like in a spam filter are the option of just creating a file (.filter?) of the terms on which to filter, and to have the term on which a message was filtered to be appended to the file in which filtered messages are saved. I'm using the PINE filter on another server which works pretty well, but also catches quite a bit of "good" mail...and I don't know which of my filter terms caught it, to help me refine the list of terms.
Re resp:104: SpamAssassin works pretty well even without Bayes. It uses a separate set of scores, in that situation. It's still a CPU hog, though.
Rane, have you tried using procmail, with a set of your own terms to filter on? I have a log file showing which filter caught what. Can I keep deleting the .spamassassin files?
No...haven't had time to set that up, since you first wrote about it. What are all your relevant files, so I can see what's involved? I want it to be REALLY EASY.
REALLY
You can copy over ~keesan/mail/filter and modify it slightly, also ~keesan/.forward. Change keesan to rcurl. Change the white list or delete it. Check the ~rcurl/mail/from file frequently for false positives and then delete it. Email me with questions that are not universally relevant. Spamassassin missed one mail today, sent 'To' some nonexistent grexer. I find that spamassassin together with a few 'To' filters gets everything now, but it is wasting space.
I stopped by Provide.net this afternoon. I switched the cables at the modem end, putting each modem back on its original line but with the other cable. I made this change around a quarter of five. Please let me know what effect this change has had on dial-up. (Report here rather than in e-mail, though.)
Thanks joe!
thanks gaynate !
Dialup is working fine just now, but I don't recall which number I dialed. Probably 512. Joe, could Bill L have a try at getting the 28.8K modem bank to work? He has a setup that lets him test things offline and lots of manuals and experience with modems, and also a vested interest since grex is his only internet connection.
It was 513 that worked. Right now both lines were busy.
Is there something wrong with backtalk? I logged in today, and ALL items in agora are now "unread". I caught up with everything on Friday, and this is a little annoying. Help? And thanks in advance.
probably the file that records what you've read got either corrupted or dumped. Usually this is because the partition you're on filled while you were logged in, so changes couldn't be saved, but other reasons are possible.
When I telnet from work, my paged reading of bbs items or e-mail works fine. When I telnet from home, the last line is either omitted or overwritten with spaces. What might account for the difference? And if I wished to treat the symptom, how could I reduce my page size line count by 1?
Sometimes I also lose my last line - I will check if telnetted makes a difference. Have you tried ssh instead?
re #119: I'm going to guess that you're using Windows telnet from home,
possibly on XP. And that you're using a different telnet from work --
either using a different version of Windows or using a different telnet
app entirely (e.g. puTTY, or Hyperterm, or any of a zillion free or
commercial alternatives.)
The issue seems to be that your termcap info isn't getting set properly,
and if you're using Windows telnet it's probably not helping much.
A couple of suggestions:
1) switch to a program like PuTTY for home use, which has much
better terminal emulation than the Windows telnet app and also
supports SSH for more secure connections
2) if you don't want to switch away from telnet, use the "resize"
command to try to reset the number of lines in your terminal,
e.g., in tcsh, csh, sh, or bash:
eval `resize`
(backwards single quotes in the above are important)
3) try a different terminal type, e.g. use "ansi" rather than vt100
if it works better with the terminal emulator you're using
:ignore triludaa Ignoring triludaa >twit has been filtered krokus: twit has been filtered Telegram from triludaa on ttypc at 23:30 EDT ... yet you left your tel on! EOF (triludaa) Telegram from triludaa on ttypc at 23:30 EDT ... prick EOF (triludaa) Then on M-net: Respond or pass? Telegram from triluda on ttypa at 23:31 EDT ... stop being a prick EOF (triluda)
lolz triluda is funny
We feel your pain krokus.
You feel it up the bum-hole.
About 15 minutes ago, after being timed-out (distracted by snail-mail arriving) I tried to get back on, but the modem just rang and rang without answering. Telnet works. The same thing, except an unexpected-disconnect instead of a time-out, happened to kingjon yesterday evening.
This response has been erased.
Supersize
Re: resp:121 - Thanks for the reponse. I see that there is no "resize" on grex. And my last-line-gobbled-on-home-telnet problem did *not* occur under old grex, just nextgrex. At work, I use Hummingbird's telnet. At home I do indeed use the Windows telnet. Is there no "pagesize" / "pageslines" setting in some config file I could edit?
Typically no.. In a SysVish Unix system you could set the "ROWS" environment variable, but the the BSD variant we're using does things a little differently. What happens if you do "tset vt102" or "tset ansi" in the shell? Do either of those termcaps work better?
/usr/X11R6/bin/resize
I'll have to get back to you re: those tset variations. Meanwhile, did the following do what you would expect? Respond or pass? !/usr/X11R6/bin/resize COLUMNS=80; LINES=24; export COLUMNS LINES;
Ahh.. apparently it's "LINES", not "ROWS".. These days my terminal
software virtually always gets it right so I rarely have to mess with
it manually anymore..
The resize command merely outputs what you'd need to type in to the
shell to get it to set your terminal settings properly, it can't force-
feed them into the shell's environment. For that reason it's usually
used in conjunction with the shell built-in "eval", which causes the
shell to evaluate an expression (in this case, one compounded from
several separate instructions.) To use resize in conjunction with eval
you'll want something like the backtick syntax I suggested above, e.g.:
{exit bbs to your shell}
eval `/usr/X11R6/bin/resize`
{restart bbs and test whether it worked.}
Using a shell escape to run it from within bbs probably isn't going to
do you much good.
The root of the problem, however, is probably that your terminal program
is misreporting the number of lines and columns.. In which case you can
either look at the results from /usr/X11R6/bin/resize and fudge a bit or
(as I keep suggesting, I realize..) switch to a better terminal program,
e.g. PuTTY.
It's been three days since we were able to dial in at all; the modem phone rings indefinitely and is not answered.
I was able to dial in today, after 2 days of no connections. Try again.
We finally succeeded in dialing in, when we noticed that there was another official number posted in the motd. So I can report: 484-0512 rings open indefinitely; 484-0513 works (at least for now).
512 also would not connect for me today.
I may be able to get over that way on Monday. I'll see if I have another modem to drop in.
This response has been erased.
I don't know if this is a Backtalk problem or a Firefox problem... however two strange things are ocurring. The <next conf> button works to go through a few conferences, but then it will just hang- or give me the first part of the conf screen but not the section with the buttons. Secondly, when reading items if I try to <view responses X-y> section,, it seems to send me back a random number and the selection I requested.
I was wrong - it was running /usr/X11R6/bin/resize at the shell prompt that allows bbs & paged reading to work. My home telnet somehow causes my interaction with nextgrex to be at 25 lines.
BTW, every time I scribble a response at the "Respond or pass?" prompt, bbs croaks with "Memory fault". However, the sribble succeeds.
Oh boy... Looks like I'm the sytem problem this time. While having the mail program set as my pager, I did something that generated 87 pieces of mail to one of my accounts. My appologies in advance if this gets us flagged as a spammer. (As a quick explination: I use PuTTY, and accidently right-clicked after copying a large block of text. For those that don't know, that tells putty to paste.)
I thought Shift-Enter was required to paste?
Nope.
Depends what settings you've chosen. If you choose xterm-style cut-and-paste it works as krokus describes.
0512 is not working, 0513 is.
I didn't get over that way today. Maybe tomorrow.
Who has the 28.8K bank of modems?
Most of the old modems didn't work reliably. I think they were recycled. Or just trashed. I kept one or two.
Dan G bought a bunch of 28.8K modems at Property Disposition. Bill L would like to get them going. He is experienced with modems and grex is his only net connection so he has lots of incentive. Do you know who has them? They came without the required software or instructions.
dang probably still has those modems. I recall that there was a rather interesting problem - they had some kind of nonstandard firmware, and he couldn't find documentation or figure it out.
That is what Bill hopes to figure out. He has a setup for testing phones and modems offline, and a reason for spending time on this. I will write dang.
Connecting with ssh, my first try got a message "server refused to allocate pty". Tried again & got in.
Through telnet, my first try gave me all ports are busy. Worked on the second try.
It appears the idle zapper has died again.. I'll restart it.
I connected with dang, who will deliver the modem bank to me or Bill soon. Thanks, Scott.
SOmeone please kill the triludaa account, which is using up a lot of cpu time. A couple minutes ago load average was 4.5, now it is 5.5.
> Someone please kill the triludaa account, which is using up a lot of cpu Using a lot of CPU is not (by itself) justification for killing an account.
When 25% of all cpu time is being used by users, and 23.5% of this is one user, is this justification? It looks like vandalism to me.
You haven't given close to enough information to make that decision. The user could have been running a compiler. Or a program that performs repeated numerical calculations. Or any number of other things.. OR they could have been vandalizing the system.. Without more information than you have given, however, there's no reason to conclude that the last of those options MUST have been their motivation.
This particular user has vandalized the system before. It was running bash, and shortly before this 'user www' was tying up just as much cpu time.
Load average just under 6, Triludaa still running bash, about 28% of cpu time.
Probably sending out the e-mails I've been getting the last couple days from multiple users on grex, including triludaa. Looks like they are using the passwd file for information. "Hello <user full name>,<location> take care".
I got three of those things today. Perhaps we could set a limit on the number of mails sent per day per user?
i got the same emails
Me too.
The e-mails you got were generated by a script that some user had in his/her homedir. The permissions were set to execute only (no read). Once we found out what it was doing, we stopped the process and reported it to Remmers, who locked the account, and locked the script. Anyway, triludaa has been working on some programming projects. Unless he is interfering with other people's use of Grex, why should he be locked?
poor triludaa ;(
Re #168, last paragraph: Indeed. The test for whether one is abusing resources on a shared system like this is whether others are prevented from doing what they want to do, or are slowed down unreasonably in doing what they want to do. I've noticed neither. The system's always been quick and responsive whenever I've been on it recently.
I found the system to be extremely sluggish when the load average was 5. I would type a sentence and wait 30 - 60 sec for it to appear. Perhaps this was due to my ISP being slow?
I was just saying that I got the mail- nothing else intended.
I was logged on during much of the period that Sindi was complaining about (as shown by my responses interleaved with her complaints) and found the system responsiveness to be pretty normal during that time. I did have a talk with triludaa about the CPU usage. He said he was running a program he'd written and was unaware that it was taking up so much CPU time. When I made him aware of the issue he killed the program and agreed that he should redesign it. Only future behavior can truly demonstrate whether he was sincere or not but I believed that he was not intentionally harming the system (it's easy enough to do that, frankly, if that's really your intention) and I don't think it's wise to automatically assume malice from a user just because they don't fit into the usual pattern of picospan/party/email use.
When I was trying to compile something at grex I would be careful to run the compiler when few other people were online, such as Sunday mornings or the middle of the night.
On the Sun that Grex used to run on, that was helpful. Now that we're on much more modern and higher-performance hardware, compilations have much less impact on other users.
This response has been erased.
re 170 Is that similar to the Ratio Test ?
Seems to be a problem with the password file being locked. Nobody can change their password.
Today I was bombarded with telegrams from triludaa with text spanning three to four pages.He has written some program to take input from flat files and telegram user in a loop.He later sent me about 40 spam emails with no from address or subject using grex smtp.He is really a pain in the ass.
He didn't need to write a programme.
Perhaps we could harness his unused energy by asking him to write some useful program for grex instead?
Hanlon's Razor - Don't attribute to malice something that can be explained by incompetence. http://home.kc.rr.com/psychology140/ct-razors.htm
It seems every afternoon grex freezes up and crashes. And then we can't get back on the system for anywhere from a couple of minutes to 15 minutes. Is there some kind of maintenace going on at that time? Is this supposed to be normal. Today the crash was around 4:30 pm.
1:30pm PST
Thu Aug 11 21:28:01 EDT 2005: Grex was hosed, for lack of a better word. I called provide.net, who power-cycled the machine. We are back now. (I'm guessing fsck got hung on an unwatched reboot.)
THANKS, joe
Thanks Joe.
Thanks Joe!
Good to see it back. I'm able to telnet in, but ssh isn't connecting.
It is for me.
Hmmm. Works for me now too. Go figure.
Thankya, gelinas.
romantic is using write to flood my screen. someone should please do something about this.
I swapped out the (probably) bad modem on 484-0512. Let us know, here, how the (relatively) new one works.
How do I create a new accout with "newuser" when I ssh into Grex? I've tried to do this a couple times in the past month, and all I get is newuser@grex.org's password: When I type "newuser" as the password I get Access denied and it asks for the password again. Can people only create new accounts from the web?
Can create new accounts through telnet.
Thanks Joe
You need to use telnet or the web to create an account.
That's a bummer. I imagine that a lot of potential newusers don't know that (or don't know how to implement that). There should at least be a message to that effect before the first prompt.
There is no welcome message for ssh.
Telnet doesn't work either. I tried telnetting to grex.org and to cyberspace.org. I got the same screen as I got when using ssh More ideas?
Use the web.
Sounds like "telnet" is just an alias for "ssh" on your machine, cmcgee. In the Unix world, I'd "which telnet" and "where telnet" to find a telnet client that isn't ssh.
Neither modem was correctly answering this morning - I stopped waiting for them to time out.
512 is working again.
gelinas, I'm on a Windows XP OS, using the "run" command to get to a DOS command line interface. Then I type "telnet". Maybe SP2 or some other upgrade turned it into an ssh alias?
This response has been erased.
Both modems just keep ringing. I could ssh here.
Modems still not answering.
I got through on 513 but 512 does not answer.
The thing about Clinton should surely say FORMER president.
I agree - that really looks bad. Or maybe grexers are in denial?
I thought former presidents were still addressed as "Mr. President"?
No, you would address Mr. Clinton as Mr. Clinton.
today is william jefferson clinton's birthday.
re #214 No, I wouldn't.
I got two of these in two days, the first with 'from' in upper ascii
and 'from' gmail, this one from cyberspace.
The last two lines of the message body were identical. Out of curiosity
as to what it might provoke, I actually answered the first one. Is anyone
else getting these?
From ling7334@grex.cyberspace.org Fri Aug 19 11:38:47 2005
Received: from ling7334 (helo=localhost)
by grex.cyberspace.org with local-esmtp (Exim 4.42)
id 1E63iW-0001x9-CP
for keesan@grex.cyberspace.org; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 06:03:16 -0400
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 06:03:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: LingZhifeng <ling7334@grex.cyberspace.org>
To: keesan@grex.cyberspace.org
Subject: re:you are not accepting messages
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.58.0508190548320.4084@grex.cyberspace.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: LingZhifeng <ling7334@cyberspace.org>
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on
grex.cyberspace.org
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.3 required=3.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,
FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
I'm not accepting message because I'm not familiar with this system and
I've mail to you with gmail but it's encrypt.
I'm a student,I haven't many time.you can mail to me,I'll reply to you.
Have a good day!
ling was talking in party last night about having written a spam program. This was around 1:00 a.m. Apparently he tested it.
Thanks. Is it time to write some program to stop this from happening? For instance, by limiting the number of recipients of the same mail?
re #216 Mr. Former President ?
No, former presidents are addressed as any other civilian would be. "President" is not like a military rank where it is retained after retirement.
Mr. President From 1993 to 2001 ?
re #221 In the United States, it is still fine to address the Senator as Mr. John Smith, although the office title on the envelope may help direct the letter more quickly. For a salutation in a letter, we would generally write "Dear Senator Smith" or "Dear Mr. Senator." We would use the same manner of address in person, that is, "Senator Smith" or "Mr. Senator." While there is nothing "wrong" with calling him "Mr. Smith," it is usually seen as being a mite disrespectful, unless you know personally that the official prefers that means of address. This pattern applies to most ranking officials such as mayors, elected legislators, governors, ministers, presidents, secretaries, and titles formed from these names like lieutenant governor, vice-president, or undersecretary. When They are Voted Out... What happens when they no longer hold the office? Usually out of respect, we would still refer to them the same way. While we might refer to a retired Senator Smith as former Senator Smith or ex-Senator Smith, that would not be appropriate as an address - whether a direct personal address or address on a letter. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate to continue to address him as "Senator Smith" or write him in care of "Senator John Smith." The term Honorable is usually reserved for those still in office. For the salutation in a letter, it would still be fine to write "Dear Senator Smith." "Dear Mr. Senator" tends to suggest that he is still in office. There is usually nothing wrong with addressing him as "Dear Mr. Smith," but it is probably better to avoid it unless you know for sure that he does not mind. This is especially true after an election loss. Calling him "Mr. Smith" rather than "Senator Smith" might be calling more attention to his loss - and gloating is never good manners. The Conclusion of the Matter Clearly, if you have a personal relationship with the person and know the person's preferences, you may use whatever would be appropriate in your situation. If the senator is a personal friend, you may always start your letters with "Dear John." Sometimes officials will insist on it. But in most such situations, you may use the same appellations that you used when the person was in office, though it is probably best to avoid Honorable or Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms. plus the title once the person is out of office. http://englishplus.com/news/news1200.htm So, it comes down to a matter of respect for the office. In the case of President Clinton and President GW Bush, neither of them were voted "out" so it would behoove a stranger to address them with their known title.
Can someone explain why it is that I occasionally log on and I show all brand new items? Like I haven't logged on at all for the new agora?
If you lose your connection during bbs, then it is possible to lose your
history.
When that happens, I type "fix"
Then "read since {date time i'd last read items}"
It happens to me even when I don't lose connection while in BBS. I've quit BBS and logged out of grex, and the next time I get all brandnew items. It happened to me THREE times yesterday. Seems to be a problem here.
I had one instance of it, yesterday.
This response has been erased.
RE 225 Thanks!
Re 228> Reading mnet gives me a headache. Too much actuivity and very little relevance
It also can happen when somebody scribbles responses.
re #231 What do you mean?
The item in which a response has been scribbled can show up as unread, though there are no new responses to display. Annoying when somebody does that "scribble all my responses in this conf" thing.
Is this a systems problem, Scott?
This response has been erased.
I think it can also happen if /a fills up and you cannot write to your participation file and it gets messed up.
What's this? Is it a problem?
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:58:36 -0700
From: Returned mail <MAILER-DAEMON@cyberspace.org>
To: rcurl@cyberspace.org
Subject: hi
Parts/Attachments:
1 Shown 3 lines Text (charset: ISO-8859-1)
2 81 KB Application
----------------------------------------
Once you have completed the form in the attached file
your account records will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.
[ Part 2, Application/X-COMPRESSED 108KB. ]
[ Cannot display this part. Press "V" then "S" to save in a file. ]
Looks like a forged From address and someone fishing for your social security number.
That's what I thought. I rarely open attachments to such, but rarely I take at look to see what the attachment is, expecting the fact that I'm running Mac OS-X to stop any viruses/worms/etc/.
/etc/.
User "XXX" on grex had the mail program (sending of mail from the command
prompt) hang/crash. Ever since then, on a daily basis or more frequently,
grex keeps sending the user the following notice, even though the recovery
file was deleted. What is doing this, and how can it be turned off.
(e-mailings of this to staff have not met with a response)
From root@cyberspace.org Thu Aug 25 15:45:55 2005
Envelope-to: XXX@cyberspace.org
Delivery-date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:45:55 -0400
X-vi-recover-file: /tmp/mail.RenjUxL20914
X-vi-recover-path: /var/tmp/vi.recover/vi.UHFdq21332
Reply-To: root@cyberspace.org
From: root@cyberspace.org (Nvi recovery program)
To: XXX@cyberspace.org
Subject: Nvi saved the file mail.RenjUxL20914
Precedence: bulk
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:45:55 -0400
On Wed Aug 17 14:08:22 2005, the user XXX was editing a file
named /tmp/mail.RenjUxL20914 on the machine
grex.cyberspace.org, when it was saved for recovery. You can
recover most, if not all, of the changes to this file using
the -r option to vi:
vi -r /tmp/mail.RenjUxL20914
When I'm dialed in direct, it is *still* impossible for me to make any responses or new items; I get some sort of core dump error from the editor. Is there a more "automatic" way to get a response entered from a pre-written file? Something like "respond < filename"?
It appears to be something about the gate editor. I am entering this direct-dialed with vi.
While bbs'ing: /log: write failed, file system is full
Re: resp:241 finally the nags are no longer being sent.
Re. #183. Regarding crashing, when I was disconnected shortly after
logging on (a little after 8 p.m.), I became curious as to how frequent
the crashes have been recently, which motivated my composing a log of
recent reboots.
Last login data is included to estimate system down time.
For the privacy of users who happened to be the last users logged-in
immediately prior to a reboot, I have replaced their userids with
"userid" in the data below.
reboot ~ Tue Aug 30 20:28 [8:28pm]
userid ttyq1 157.95.31.174 Tue Aug 30 20:13 - crash
(00:15) [approx. time following last login: 28 - 13 = 15 min.]
.... .... .... .... ....
reboot ~ Tue Aug 30 10:37
userid ttyq3 80.51.51.23 Tue Aug 30 10:18 - 10:21
(00:02) [approx. time following last login: 37 - 18 = 19 min.]
.... .... ....
reboot ~ Tue Aug 30 08:47
userid ttyq3 217.21.35.33 Tue Aug 30 06:50 - crash
(01:56)
[approx. time following last login: 8:47 - 6:50 = 1 hr. 57 min.]
.... .... ....
reboot ~ Mon Aug 29 10:02
userid ttyp2 dialup-4.159.214.153.dial1.chicago1.level3.net
Mon Aug 29 09:45 - crash
(00:16) [approx. time following last login: 10:02 - 9:45 = 17 min.]
.... .... .... .... .... .... ....
reboot ~ Mon Aug 29 00:43
userid ttyqe helix.kaist.ac.kr Mon Aug 29 00:27 - crash
(00:16) [approx. time following last login: 43 - 27 = 16 min.]
.... .... .... .... ....
reboot ~ Sun Aug 28 07:32
userid ttyp7 ACD6D4DE.ipt.aol.com Sun Aug 28 07:16 - 07:16
(00:00) [approx. time following last login: 32 - 16 = 16 min.]
.... .... ....
reboot ~ Sat Aug 27 10:34
userid ttypb ip68-13-188-36.om.om.cox.net
Sat Aug 27 02:09 - 02:11
(00:01)
[approx. time following last login: 10:34 - 02:09 = 8 hrs. 25 min.]
.... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....
reboot ~ Thu Aug 25 15:46 (3:46pm)
userid ttyp3 netsun.cl.msu.edu Thu Aug 25 15:30 - crash
(00:15) [approx. time following last login: 46 - 30 = 16 min.]
Mode of accessing the above data:
Step 1: Access the shell prompt.
Step 2: Type: "last [pipe symbol] more" (without the quotation marks and
without the square brackets). (The pipe is the uppercase symbol sharing
the same key with the backslash "\". Sometimes typing a pipe into an
editor screen will generate unpredictable results, but the field following
the shell prompt should accept it.)
Step 3: Type: "/" (without the quotation marks).
Step 4: Type "reboot" (without the quotation marks).
Step 5: To view prior reboots: repeat steps 3 and 4 for each prior reboot.
(You may be able to depress the up arrow key in lieu of retyping
"reboot".)
Re Step 5: Typing "n" instead of "/reboot" will also skip to the next
reboot entry.
Also, if you just want to see a list of recent reboots with other login
information filtered out, you can use the Unix 'grep' utility. Type
this at the shell prompt:
last|grep '^reboot '|more
Using 'awk', you can get a list of reboots, with each reboot followed by
a list of who was logged in at the time of the immediately preceding crash:
last|awk '{if (/^reboot /) print $0; else if (/- crash/) print " "$1}'
|more
(Backtalk wrapped the preceding command; it should be typed all on one
line.)
These reboots are not planned. For a few days now, Grex has been
crashing a couple of times a day, resulting in downtime of 20 minutes or
so while it reboots itself. At this point, cause unknown. Usually the
reboot is successful; when it's not, somebody (usually somebody at our
colo, and on some occasions me) has to push the reset button manually.
I realize the sporadic outages are annoying. Hopefully we'll get the
problem resolved soon.
I was logged on twice this week when it happened, I think. Lucky me. I have been emailing gelinas each time - is this appropriate? Should I email colo instead? Or phone them?
As a practical matter, I'm online often enough that most of the time I notice that Grex is down sooner than another staff member is likely to notice or to check their email. So for this particular problem, I don't think emailing someone speeds up the process of getting Grex back up when it doesn't successfully reboot itself. You shouldn't contact the colo directly. They are just hosting our server and don't maintain it. They are willing do something simple, like power-cycle it or hit the reset button, but for security reasons only on the direct request of a Grex staff member who is known to them.
Is it known yet whether the reboots are hardware-initiated, software-initiated, or both?
Not known to me. No reboots in two days. (cross fingers)
As opposed to "finger cross". ;-)
This response has been erased.
Think pretty highly of yourself, don't you?
This response has been erased.
Would you settle for an MRE?
This response has been erased.
/send dan a big bucket of popeye's wings and a soady-pop
Now it's refusing to let me enter stuff direct-dialed using vi. Just got a "nasty error message" or something when I tried to enter a response.
grex is back! thanks to staff for what sounds like a lot of work to repair the labor day attack. what exactly happened that caused this mess anyway?
Thanks to the staff member(s) who got Grex back up. Could we hear the story?
The response time was outragious! We need some accountability here. People need to be fired or demoted and a contigency plan should be drafted up just incase this happens again!
The staff member who got Grex back up was me, aided by Jan Wolter's life-saving mirroring software and some helpful advice in email from Marcus Watts. I'm only sorry that I wasn't able to devote much attention to it sooner, due to other commitments last week. What happened: Some files in the /etc disk partition (in particular, the password file) became corrupt, for reasons unknown to me but probably due to a software glitch (don't know if it was OS software or application software, either). I made a trip to our colo and was able to run some tests and verify that the disks and filesystems were healthy, but didn't have time to investigate further. On a subsequent trip, I booted into single user mode and took some time to look around the filesystem, eventually discovering that the password file (and possibly others) had been corrupted. Grex's important file systems (system directories, user directories, bbs) are backed up to a spare hard drive every few hours, thanks to some mirroring software that Jan Wolter wrote. Because of this, I was able to restore "good" versions of the files in /etc from the state they were in about 4 hours before the crash. Thankfully, that's all it took to get Grex to boot successfully. The most that was lost was whatever new accounts were created via newuser in that 4-hour period, I think. Diagnosis of the cause of the problem will have to be left to someone who knows more about OpenBSD than I do. Until the cause is addressed, the problem may well recur. If it does, at least we know where to look now, and Grex should be up a lot sooner. I'm sorry that it all took so long this time.
John, thank you for your assistance. It is appreciated.
I say thanks to all the staff for spending their PRECIOUS time to help restore grex. So, if you want to complain that it wasn't up faster, get the knowledge, skill and volunteer to do it.
Re: #264, #265. Hear, hear!
Har, har !
Re #265: while I agree that the staff are to be thanked heartily for their efforts in maintaining Grex, I think it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be come equally skilled before they can complain. After all, the members of Grex that do not have the skills to do what staff does are still donating the funds required for staff to do what they do. I think some thanks are due for even just that - and that members do gain some license to complain thereby. In addition, it would be a huge waste of time and money for *everyone* using Grex to become equally skilled as staff, as then how could all that talent possibly be used simultaneously? Isn't there a suitable maximum to the number of staff required to adequately service Grex?
As the number of talented staff increases, the better the chances that someone will be available to work on the system at all hours of the day and night.
How about grex spend a little cash on the machine, hire a tech to come in and FIX whatever is actually wrong and stop it from crashing.
Minor thing, but isn't it time to remove the MOTD item that some loginids are missing but the staff is working to recover them? It's been there for something like 6 months, if not longer. The staff is not working on recovering them at this point, or at lrast so I prefer to believe. That announcement is kind of painful to see, day after day.
Thanks to remmers for saving us! A few minutes ago, *both* dialin lines were ringing open. I thought the system had crashed again. I am pleasantly surprised to see that it's only the dialins that are hosed.
It apparently had crashed again. It wasn't available over the network, either. last shows entries with end times of "crash" and a reboot about 9:50.
In via Backtalk. Can't read anything in the current (Autumn) Agora--hangs when I try to do anything (both pre and post the repairs done yesterday and today). Summer Agora works fine.
Pine is giving problems. When the inbox is opened all new messages are not listed. If one just returns anyway, one can read each message in order, but they remain unlisted in the message index shown.
Pine is again giving problem. The Inbox does not show properly when selected.
Pine got OK again for a while, but now again the Inbox is not shown properly (it cuts off). What changes are being made that cause it to go bad for a while and then be OK again for a while? Are changes being made to the system that could cause these changes in pine? If so, would whoever is making the changes announce them so we can ALL attribute the changes we see to a cause?
(why are you using oldagora to report this?)
Because I have both agora and oldagora in my .cflist and I sometimes don't notice which I'm in.... my bad.
it's raining on rane's .cflist
You have several choices: