87 new of 187 responses total.
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There was a big problem at IC net last night and this morning. (We're connected there at work too, so I know it was IC net)
I noticed, nothing was working from my server. It's occasionally nice when grex is off the net and there are just ten local people who all know each other. Still, it gets tired after a while.
Now Grex's internet link is hosed. Ping returns zero percent of packets, and telnet does not respond.
Net seems to be working OK right now.
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Actually, it looks like you need to be a staffer to run ping.
Not if I use the ping and telnet on my own computer.
Ok. The net link does frequently go down for a few minutes, and then bring itself back up. It's a known problem, having both to do with the version of FreeBSD we're running on our router and with general instabilities of analog phone lines.
Agora never seems to recognize previous conferencing I've done from telnet when I'm dialed. I'll probably ahve to rearead all of this again when I dial in next time.
Senna, perhaps you aren't disconnecting cleanly?
I'm disconnecting from agora fine, as far as I know. Maybe it's just me.. I"m not rereading anything yet.
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I wonder if it has anything to do with the permissions on senna's .agora21.cf file, which look strange (-rw-rw----). Could some misbhaving program have set the permissions that way?
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I was trying to access Interent Conference thru backtalk and I got an error message appearing on my screen: The first few lines of the message: Backtalk Crash Oops. Backtalk has encountered a internal error. This error has been logged. ERROR: Item number 0 illegal executing this_item in if in pistachio/read:57 any idea why? I tried few times but still the same result.
Every time I log on, regardless of the site from which I am entering, this past week, I am inundated with line noise. Today, it could be the rain. But yesterday. . . .? And over the weekend? Anyone else having the problem?
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There is something funny about the new modems. I don't think it is line noise. If it only happens when you are getting lots of date written out to your terminal, it might be caused by overruns. I have seen some behavior that looks like that recently. Can you tell us how you tried to get to the internet conference using backtalk? I'd like to duplicate what you did, Yenny.
s/date/data/
I dial 3000, Valerie.
Just now, Grex is accepting telnet and web connections with no delay, but refusing ftp connection. What is that due to?
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...but not working, at least with Fetch. I can now connect, but the directory list does not come up in the Fetch window. (Yes, the files are in the directory!)
Hmm. I just tried ftping to Grex (from Grex, since I was here), & was able
to do "ls" and "get" just fine. However, if I did "dir" (which, in my
experience so far, normally produces an "ls -l" listing, I got nothing but
messages saying:
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /usr/local/bin/ls.
226 Transfer complete.
(I didn't try anything else - in a bit of a hurry.) At a guess Rane's
Fetch is doing "dir" and getting nothing ...
That's right. I did check out my Fetch client on a UM server, and it works fine. I found I could Put and Get files fine from grex - I just had to know their name to Get them. When I Put a file, it showed up in the directory list window on Fetch. Like Dave found in command mode, Fetch acted as though it had done its thing in getting the file list, but nothing showed. I just tried all this, so the problem has not gone away.
I have fixed my word wrap problem at the browser end.
Ftpd does indeed have a problem with "dir". I hope to have it fixed today.
It's now fixed.
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I think the new modems are not quite happy yet. My suspicion is that the Grex port speed keeps defaulting to less than 2400 baud, so I'm thinking about setting those ports for 2400 baud only, and trusting the modem to deal with it if somebody connects at 1200.
That's guaranteed to cause lost output. Only the 1st 4 ports have rts/cts logic. The other ports do not have handshaking. If the modem can't keep up with grex, output is lost. There is no way around this. Since flow control is essential with error correction or for baud-rate mismatching, that imples all the ports except for the first 4 should have error correction disabled, and the modem speed should be the same as grex's speed.
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Marcus, thanks for the quick work on ftpd.
Yes - ftp dir works fine now. Nice to be able to see what one is doing....
*are* there any people left with sub-2400bps modems anymore? since 2400bps modems can be had at swap meets for pennies at some point it becomes cheaper/easier to stockpile a stack of them and *give* them away to the 1200bps users and not inconvenience everyone else using faster modems and waste staff time supporting the technology..
lately I've been getting a failed security checkpoint message when I leave the first conference of my .cflist (or whichever file it is that orders my conference membership).
I have a 300bps that is my backup to my backup emergency modem. However, my Porsche is doing fine, and is showing no signs of failing. (hayes 14400)
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sounds more like a '94 escort at the moment, omni. My '96 28800 has yet to fail, but we have two backup modems just in case.
I have a 300 baud TRASH-80 modem in the basement, which I haven't used since '89. Probably works. 2400s are more common here though; and I use a NewComn 33.6K on the main brain, and have a 14.4K ZOOM out on loan to someone who is trying to use it to play MOO 2 multi-player.
In answer to resp:131. I switched from MSIE to Netscape. It's much better, doesn't have as many security problems, and wraps the text like Backtalk expects it to.
plus, microsoft maybe getting out of the internet service provider business....
For reasons I cannot fathom, I am unable to properly dialin to grex. Dialing both -5041 and -3000, I get garbled messages... I can tell what grex is supposed to say, but for whatever reason the characters are changed to gibberish.
Are you dialing at 81N or 71E?
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hi !! agni , sorry but can you tell me how do we come out of the picospan as i logged in first time yesterday and happen to chose this . i wanted to chose the menu type !!
I think triveni is confused in bbs :) type unix then it will get you $ prompt
Microsoft Internet explorer, since it seems to be the stable browser at the moment. I was worried about my word wrap.
My experience using MSIE with Backtalk was that it tended to mess up word wrap. Netscape, on the other hand, does not. So I've switched to Netscape. (The "stability" of MSIE is debatable, but that's material for another item.)
Wow, the word wrap *is* hideous. My dialin program was indeed set wrong, thanks for the advice. MSIE is stable on my computer, that's all that counts.
Would it be possible to make backtalk do the wordwrap itself, if the browser won't do it. I know the browser should do it, but MSIE is really too popular a browser to just ignore, no matter how bad a browser it may be.
The only way I know of to enforce word-wrap from backtalk would be to have it surround everything with the pre tag, which would be fairly unattractive unless you're a big fan of the Courier font.. basically you'd be making it moderately ugly for everyone to avoid making it *really* ugly for those users whose broken software is the culprit.
Backtalk already surrounds responses with the <pre> tag. (I just looked at the html source.)
Right. I think the MSIE/Backtalk word wrap problem is that when you type text into the form entry box and let MSIE do the word wrap for you, MSIE isn't passing the line breaks over to Backtalk when the form is submitted. Netscape, on the other hand, does it right.
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I think that's true as well. My sister has problems with nontranslated word wrap.
in backtalk's vanilla i/f for registered users, there is a spelling
mistake: one of the choices it shows at the end of a new response is
"Postpone responding and contine reading"
^^^^^^^
I fixed the typo. It was in vanilla/read in the scripts. There is already code in the backtalk engine to wrap lines. The pistachio scripts don't invoke it. I am not sure whether this makes sense given the amount of trouble we have had with MSIE. I usually let Jan tweak Pistachio, though.
I should fix that.
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When I just dialed into GREX, I was presented a pine menu, then was able to get into bbs. Joining auction, I appear to be quark.
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That happened to me once, it appeared that I had dialed into raven's login. I contacted staff ab out it, and relogged in as myself. I'm still not very good about disconnecting, though.
I recently (in the last couple of days) got disconnected without logging out. It's possible that Grex crashed, however ... I started elm, it read in my first 3 messages & then just hung there for several minutes before disconnecting.
there appears to be a Backtalk problem, where it is going to the wrong host for the images. Did the backtalk config file get backed up? I should correct this, but I am too tired, and need to go to bed.
yes, the grex logo (http://graphics-www.grex.org/grex/grexweb2.gif) is not getting displayed on the conference home pages. netscape is unable to find the server.
Oh, graphics-www was an alias for my work station at work, from when the place where Grex was storing its images was down. I took it out of Grex's DNS a few days ago, thinking that Grex had long since stopped using it, and wondering why I was still getting so many hits.
when i try to access the item "archives", /backtalk/ is getting an internal error. tried a few times -- the problem is 100% repeatable.
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Is Backtalk's graphics stuff fixed yet? I could put graphics-www back into the DNS, but I kind of hesitate to do that since as long as Backtalk seems to be working it will probably take a long time before somebody gets around to fixing it the right way.
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re #170, 171 I tried accessing the conference ( archive ) and get the same result. First by typing the name in the entrance page and later through the item list. Every time when I press the read new button, it gives the backtalk crash message. Maybe someone would like to investigate this?
re #171: ok, i meant a conference. and yeah, it is "archive" and i had tried "archive". it did not work. i'll try out today also. re #174: the graphics are working.
The queue hung at 17 for some time, and then suddenly flashed login: *and* disconnected on the timer.
The new modem "letter salad" problem is partially solved. If you have the problem where connecting to one of the new modems gives you occasional garbled screens, try turning on your modem's error correction. If your modem does not have error correction, I am still working on that part of the problem. You can also try dialing in to 761-5041 to connect to our faster lines with different modei attached to them.
This is a puzzle, not a problem - I have oldagora - at the top of my .cflist, and it was stopping there, even when there were no new entries. A couple of days ago it started skipping oldagora and going right to the second cf in my .cflist. What was changed?
Re 179: Put you into first conference on your .cflist with or without activity there: Picospan behavior. Putting you in the first conference from your .cflist with activity: Backtalk (pistachio) behavior.
No - it *stopped* putting me in the first item on my .cflist. It now just reports "no activity" and goes on. This is on a telnet link - not Backtalk.
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Ah hah! That is why I now see "spring" twice! Both oldagora and agora are spring.
Has anyone else had odd things happen with Zmodem transfers from Lynx, using Win(gnut)'95's Hypertermial? Every time I d/l something, after the file is finished, Lynx proceeds to do several screen refreshes, then begins a kermit transfer. Is this '95, Lynx, or Zmodem? I've had the same thing happen on my and two other computers, all running '95.
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needs to be entered into summer ... intersting problems
Tha's on Grex. seems to be just Hypeterminal from what I can tell. I'm trying out a new term program (AceComm) that handles Zmodem d/l's just fine. Hmmm.
You have several choices: