Grex Helpers Conference

Item 63: System Problems

Entered by valerie on Mon Sep 22 22:28:17 1997:

78 new of 283 responses total.


#206 of 283 by valerie on Sat Nov 22 04:14:06 1997:

This response has been erased.



#207 of 283 by scott on Sat Nov 22 14:24:12 1997:

The last time we had problems like the above with modems was with the newer
models running at 2400.  If you make sure your error-correction is on on your
modem, it works much better.  There is no configuration thing for this; the
new modems just don't like running with no error-correction.


#208 of 283 by valerie on Sat Nov 22 22:41:52 1997:

This response has been erased.



#209 of 283 by tpryan on Sun Nov 23 15:19:02 1997:

        I have my terminial emulator (Procomm) take the 14.4 modem
down to 9600 before dialing the 9600 lines, down to 2400 before 
dialing the 2400 lines.  That seems to give best results for me.


#210 of 283 by tsty on Sun Nov 23 19:16:02 1997:

hmmmm, when is the motd section about spam going to take effect?
  
Sun Nov 23 14:10:44 EST 1997
[Internet access provided by ICNet, (313) 998-0090.]

>>
>> The auction ends December 6th, so don't wait!
>>

Grex's mail system has been configured to reject mail that claims to come
from systems that don't exist.  This should reduce spam.    -jdw


From roy@dmr.ca Sat Nov 22 23:53:29 1997
Received: from seralph21.essex.ac.uk (seralph21.essex.ac.uk [155.245.240.171])
by grex.cyberspace.org (8.6.13/8.6.12) with SMTP id XAA14423 for
<tsty@cyberspace.org>; Sat, 22 Nov 1997 23:53:26 -0500 Received: from serultra0
by seralph21.essex.ac.uk; (5.65v3.2/1.1.8.2/14Feb95-1154AM)
        id AA01188; Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:49:19 GMT
Received: from mark.netlink.be by serultra0.ac.uk (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
        id EAA26019; Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:49:01 GMT
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 04:49:01 GMT
To: lonelyguy@yourisp.com
From: roy@dmr.ca (Lonely? Horny? Call Susan)
Comments: Authenticated sender is <roy@dmr.ca>
Reply-To: janet-smith@usa.net
Errors-To: janet-smith@usa.net
Subject: Horny?  Lonely? Free Phone Sex
Message-Id: <199711222920FAA45185@karlp.essex.ac.uk>

<HTML><PRE><BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"><FONT COLOR="#00FFFF" SIZE=3>
         Phone Sex -  For Adults Only
       Live Adult Chat Line - One on One
          Any topic - No holds Barred
                011-592-244-066
                011-592-246-350              
  DO NOT  Pay $3.99/minute for Phone Sex
You only pay for the phone call - no other charge
          As low as 69 cents/minute
   International Long Distance Rates Apply


</FONT><FONT  COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3>
^U



#211 of 283 by bmoran on Sun Nov 23 21:10:44 1997:

Don't 'cha just hate those e-mail messages with the <html> tags?


#212 of 283 by janc on Sun Nov 23 22:05:03 1997:

I don't know much about this.  It certainly won't eliminate all spam.


#213 of 283 by valerie on Sun Nov 23 22:05:44 1997:

This response has been erased.



#214 of 283 by valerie on Sun Nov 23 22:06:02 1997:

This response has been erased.



#215 of 283 by janc on Sun Nov 23 22:28:20 1997:

TS's message is from dmr.ca.  If you do "!host dmr.ca" it says
 dmr.ca mail is handled by mail.dmr.ca
 dmr.ca mail is handled by mail.montreal.istar.net
So evidentally mail sent to dmr.ca goes someplace.  That means it is legal
as far as the mail blocks are concerned.  A lot of spam these days does
not include a legal return address.  But some does.


#216 of 283 by other on Mon Nov 24 02:07:57 1997:

if mail with neither origin nor destination of grex is blocked, then will i
not receive mail fprwarded from another account to grex without a to: line
including grex?


#217 of 283 by scg on Mon Nov 24 04:19:26 1997:

The To: line is just part of the message text, and has nothing to do with
where the mail protocols think the message is going.  Most mail programs put
on a To: line so that the reader can tell who the message is for.  As long
as the RCPT line in the SMTP transaction says to deliver it to you on Grex,
it will work fine.


#218 of 283 by valerie on Mon Nov 24 19:22:42 1997:

This response has been erased.



#219 of 283 by tsty on Mon Nov 24 22:49:16 1997:

hmmmmm, spam is one step ahead of the brains
  
let's hope the brains can catch up, as if they had nothing else to do.
  
   /sigh
  
and i don't even HAVE a phone to take "advantage" of this "special
offer!"  double /sigh


#220 of 283 by davel on Tue Nov 25 02:06:45 1997:

TS, there is *no* automated system which will filter out all junk email like
that, without running a serious risk of filtering out wanted, non-junk email.
After all, the real differnce between a marketing mailing list sending junk
mail to 60000 people who haven't asked for it & (say) the hammered-dulcimer
lists I subscribe to is really only that those receiving the latter have asked
to be put on the list.  (And there are only a couple of hundred recipients
on the dulcimer lists, of course.)


#221 of 283 by gibson on Tue Nov 25 03:34:58 1997:

        i'm still getting gibberish across the bottom of my screen at least
once a night. sometimes hitting space gets past it and then it's okay, other
times i have to log off and redial. i went to change and checked. i was set
for 24 lines but i only have 78 across. when i try to run the key function
it does to gibberish as soon as i hit backspace. any suggestions?


#222 of 283 by gibson on Tue Nov 25 04:08:16 1997:

        the screen just went nuts. it was printing line after line of
gibberish and wouldn't respond to any keys. i had to hang up to stop it.


#223 of 283 by other on Tue Nov 25 06:15:21 1997:

actually, i was asking about mail forwarded to grex from another site, which
was not originally addressed to other@cyberspace.org.


#224 of 283 by aruba on Tue Nov 25 07:21:21 1997:

Picospan keeps telling me

   mkids too small

and sometimes

   mkfds too small

whenever I read a response tonight.  (Actually it wasn't doing it until a few
minutes ago.)  (I should have said "whenever I read an item".)


#225 of 283 by scott on Tue Nov 25 12:03:10 1997:

Gibson, try dialing into 761-3000 and see if that helps.  Not as fast as the
761-5041 pau have been using, but it may help to solve the problem.


#226 of 283 by goose on Tue Nov 25 16:51:18 1997:

Can someone tell me why it takes so long for me to get logged in?
I've been trying for days and have had to give up several times,
today I'm just stubborn.  IT;s both via the net and dialup.
I login/passwd then it gets to where it tells me I have no mail
and then hangs for about 10 minutes.  I can't do anything but wait.
Once I'm here, the speed is fine.  And no, I've made no chages to
my .login.


#227 of 283 by kaplan on Tue Nov 25 18:31:54 1997:

Re 226: goose, your login shell is set to bash.  You might want to run 
the "change" program and see if switching it to something else starts 
faster.


#228 of 283 by valerie on Tue Nov 25 23:38:09 1997:

This response has been erased.



#229 of 283 by valerie on Tue Nov 25 23:50:12 1997:

This response has been erased.



#230 of 283 by aruba on Wed Nov 26 02:56:25 1997:

Interesting - thanks Valerie (and Marcus).  Everything seemd fine tonight.
("display fds" shows 5 handles open.)


#231 of 283 by davel on Wed Nov 26 14:49:53 1997:

Re 226: goose, if you continue to use bash, you might want to put lines such
as these in your .profile:
        HISTFILESIZE=25
        export HISTFILESIZE
If I recall, when I first switched to bash, it seemed to take a *long* time
coming up.  It appeared then that reading through my command-history file was
at least part of the problem.


#232 of 283 by goose on Wed Nov 26 19:00:35 1997:

Thanks folks.  I changed back to csh, twiddled with my .login and things seem
to run a bit better.  I understand the bottom of the passwd issues and am
looking forward to potential speed increases.


#233 of 283 by other on Thu Nov 27 04:33:57 1997:

Wed 11/26/97 11:01 PM EST> uptime
 11:01pm  up 2 days, 13:05,  70 users,  load average: 41.39, 35.55, 40.15

Yow!


#234 of 283 by rcurl on Thu Nov 27 04:51:42 1997:

Ugh!


#235 of 283 by aruba on Thu Nov 27 07:23:37 1997:

Yeah, it got pretty hairy there about 11pm.  I gave up and disconnected, it 
was so slow.  Anyone know what happened?


#236 of 283 by null on Fri Nov 28 23:48:03 1997:

When I use "locate <filename>", why am I getting "Segmentation fault"
and "terminated: segmentation"?


#237 of 283 by davel on Sat Nov 29 15:19:03 1997:

At a guess, the database it uses is garbaged somehow.  I just tried it, & it
found the file I was checking before dumping core.


#238 of 283 by gibson on Mon Dec 1 03:54:44 1997:

        calling in on 5041 just now got all gibberish for login. tried twice
and had trouble hangig up both times. 3000 worked fine.


#239 of 283 by dbassman on Tue Dec 2 01:28:33 1997:

I have been recently happy, Grex has been working fine for me lately...


#240 of 283 by mary on Tue Dec 2 01:33:39 1997:

Bad dbassman.  That should have been entered in the
"Happy Happy Joy Joy" item. ;-)


#241 of 283 by dbassman on Tue Dec 2 01:55:49 1997:

whoops i guess i hadn't gotten that far yet, sorry.


#242 of 283 by davel on Tue Dec 2 02:19:56 1997:

But we don't have a system non-problems item, so this is a nice place to enter
system non-problems ... as long as there aren't too many non-problems ...
8-{)]


#243 of 283 by srw on Tue Dec 2 02:43:06 1997:

Is it that you don't want the non-problems to drwon out the problems?
As a staff member, that prospect doesn't bother me too much.


#244 of 283 by davel on Wed Dec 3 01:54:14 1997:

heh.


#245 of 283 by ivynymph on Wed Dec 3 02:45:33 1997:

 because pine on m-net has been screwwy lately, i'm learning elm and mail.
 i'm learning i like them better than pine, on grex as well...


#246 of 283 by dang on Wed Dec 3 03:26:44 1997:

resp:236  The problem with locate is that some idiot created an "infinite"
directory. (That is, they created a directory, changed to it, and created
another one, changed to it, and so on ad nausium.  Probably with a script,
unless they're really strange) This confuses the program that creates the
locate database, so that locate dies with a segmentation fault when it reaches
the place in the database where this directory is.  These directories are a
problem to get rid of. (I believe someone is working on a program to get rid
of them) but they don't cause any problems except for breaking locate.


#247 of 283 by gibson on Wed Dec 3 05:11:44 1997:

        just now while reading a conf i was blown off the system. without
touching a key the screen went nuts for about 30 seconds then disconnected
me. 


#248 of 283 by tpryan on Wed Dec 3 05:13:10 1997:

        GREX is running slower than M-net lately.  
        Why so much time to continue the more in BBS?  Just starting
BBS is worthy of a full bathroom break.


#249 of 283 by dpc on Thu Dec 4 03:02:14 1997:

Pine on M-Net is back to normal.  
        Grex' load averages are again well over 20; hence the slowdown.
How about slicing a few ptys?


#250 of 283 by tao on Thu Dec 4 18:08:33 1997:

We'll give that idea all the attention it deserves, Dave.


#251 of 283 by tsty on Thu Dec 4 22:55:35 1997:

<<response(s) quashed due to, ummm, errrr .... the phase of the mountain>>


#252 of 283 by mdw on Thu Dec 4 23:49:38 1997:

Slicing pty's does not necessarily reduce system load.  In fact,
the sad fact is that pty's are a relatively minor component of
overall system load.  The other day, I found a user at another site
who had generated over 7000 finger queries over the course of 2.34 days.
This is one of the things that had contributed to a load average of 20,
by causing everything else to back up waiting for CPU time.


#253 of 283 by nephi on Fri Dec 5 03:11:34 1997:

Sometimes you guys bewilder me.  Grex is faster for me now that it has
ever been!  I'm really suprised at how fast a computer can run when its
load average is at 30.  8^)


#254 of 283 by danr on Fri Dec 5 12:50:30 1997:

re #251,252:  Perhaps we should then disable fingers?


#255 of 283 by valerie on Fri Dec 5 14:50:31 1997:

This response has been erased.



#256 of 283 by rcurl on Fri Dec 5 18:54:00 1997:

Someone has 7,000 friends on Grex? (Or was he pounding Grex with fingers
for just a few friends - with a program, I presume?)

I have had the Y - "print to local computer" - command in pine end up
crashing my computer. It works OK from CAEN, but from Grex the print
starts to spool, and then just freezes, This is with connection via
the internet. I tried it with two different printer drivers, but the
same thing happens. 


#257 of 283 by dpc on Fri Dec 5 23:39:31 1997:

Well, what *can* be done (within reason) to keep the load average
below, say, 10?  Now it's over 20 and the System is practically
unuseable.


#258 of 283 by kaplan on Fri Dec 5 23:57:07 1997:

Re 256, Print to local computer uses escape codes to tell your term 
program to control your printer.  Check the version numbers and other 
settings of pine on grex and caen.  There must be some important 
difference.


#259 of 283 by mcnally on Sat Dec 6 01:57:31 1997:

  Could also be a termcap difference, if Grex thinks your termcap
  is different it could be sending different escape sequences..


#260 of 283 by aruba on Sat Dec 6 03:55:06 1997:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but load average is a measure of the number or jobs
actually executing at one time, right?  So if we got a faster computer, the
same load average would actually be faster, right?


#261 of 283 by valerie on Sat Dec 6 14:34:30 1997:

This response has been erased.



#262 of 283 by dpc on Sat Dec 6 19:50:10 1997:

How does the speed of the 670's CPU compare with the machine we're now
running on?


#263 of 283 by remmers on Sat Dec 6 21:54:28 1997:

I don't know what the speed comparison is, but the 670 is a
multi-processor machine with two CPU's. So it will give Grex and
advantage comparable to what a second brain would give a person.


#264 of 283 by mcnally on Sun Dec 7 00:01:35 1997:

  I'm not sure a 2nd brain would be all that great an idea for a person.
  They're not 100% efficient for computers, either, since there're
  coordination and overhead issues involved, but with 2 processors the
  670 should be more efficiently able to handle big numbers of users..


#265 of 283 by remmers on Sun Dec 7 02:27:27 1997:

Well, I'd love a 2nd brain to help me multitask. But we digress.
Back to system problems...


#266 of 283 by rcurl on Sun Dec 7 19:20:12 1997:

The problem described in 256, 258 and 258, went away - by itself - on
the next day's login. Weird.


#267 of 283 by janc on Mon Dec 8 00:10:05 1997:

The each of the new computer's CPUs should be about 2-3 times faster than
Grex's current CPU.  It is hard really to compare them, because the whole
architectures are significantly different - for example, the new machines have
more hardware contexts so the should be able to shuffle between large numbers
of processes faster.  There are currently two of these faster CPU's in the
new system.  But they will be interfering with each other to a significant
degree since both cannot be executing kernel code at the same time with our
current software.  We can put four CPUs in, but rumor says the system can
actually be slower with four because they start tangling with each other too
much.  We'll probably eventually get more CPUs if only to have some spares.
Of course, CPU speed isn't the only thing that determines the speed of hte
machine.  Disk access speed is also an issue.  It is quite possible that the
performance of the machine will be limited more by disk I/O than CPU speed.
We will be using the same disks we have now, so they won't be getting any
faster.  However, we will be using a significantly newer disk controller,
which may well have some performance benefits.

So how much faster will the new machine be?  Geez, I don't know.  I'm not even
sure about half the information I just repeated.  I've been using 4-5 times
faster as a guess, but it could be off in either direction.  I've been using
it to compile software, but then I'm mostly the only user on it, and a dual
processor machine doesn't help a single user that much.  Many of the
advantages of the 4/670 aren't just raw speed but ability to handle large
number of simultaneous users.  So I can't really make even subjective
comparisons.


#268 of 283 by shyam on Mon Dec 8 12:06:20 1997:

i am shyam,i love nature.


#269 of 283 by valerie on Tue Dec 9 02:04:21 1997:

This response has been erased.



#270 of 283 by davel on Tue Dec 9 10:58:12 1997:

Unfortunately, Grex is unnatural.


#271 of 283 by cmcgee on Thu Dec 11 05:23:21 1997:

Erm, why cant I dial in on 3000 or 4931?  All I got was ringing.


#272 of 283 by davel on Thu Dec 11 10:53:25 1997:

I'm dialed in on 3000 now ...


#273 of 283 by scott on Thu Dec 11 21:03:36 1997:

The Internet link is down, apparently somewhere upstream of Grex.  


#274 of 283 by valerie on Fri Dec 12 02:28:07 1997:

This response has been erased.



#275 of 283 by gibson on Fri Dec 12 03:41:41 1997:

        i just got blown off the system while reading. this has been
happening once or twice a week. any ideas?


#276 of 283 by scg on Fri Dec 12 04:08:43 1997:

I see that Grex hasn't been rebooted yet.  I'll do that sometime fairly soon,
since the Net connection is down anyway.


#277 of 283 by rcurl on Fri Dec 12 06:37:33 1997:

(But it wasn't when you rebooted....however, thanks, as it is running
better now.)


#278 of 283 by scg on Fri Dec 12 17:26:23 1997:

Right, the Net connection came up between when I started the shutdown and when
the system actually rebooted.


#279 of 283 by dpc on Mon Dec 15 22:01:14 1997:

The new mailer has created what I think is a "system problem".  It
displays a prompt telling me to enter my text, and another prompt
about how to send copies to other recipients.  These prompts are
annoying.  I have to edit them out of the hard copies of my e-mail
that I keep.
        How to I disable these prompts?


#280 of 283 by mdw on Mon Dec 15 23:24:02 1997:

"unset helpful".  You can put this into .mailrc.


#281 of 283 by tsty on Tue Dec 16 00:19:35 1997:

although it seems to have fixed itself ... the  more pager refused to
work on ANYthing earlier, even when explicitly called (again) from
the OK: and/or RFP prompt ...from mail, and with all aliases which
called   /usr/ucb/more .. even explicitly by absolute path.
  
now, it started to work in picospan (all by itself) and seems to be
functional in my aliases, but not in email... valerie said to add
the    set PAGER=more   line into   .mailrc, which i did (ddin;'t meed
it before) but haven't tried out yet.
  
ideas?


#282 of 283 by valerie on Tue Dec 16 01:42:47 1997:

This response has been erased.



#283 of 283 by dpc on Thu Dec 18 15:44:55 1997:

Thanx, Marcus!


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