From: magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: TIN117 problem
Date: 3 Jan 93 12:45:41 GMT
Organization: DarkTower Software
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]

H.C. Pulley (hcp@csx.cciw.ca) wrote:
: In article <9212285401@drktowr.chi.il.us> magus@drktowr.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto) writes:
: >This was wierd.  I just compiled TIN117 off of mwcbbs about a week
: >ago, and it locked on me for some reason.  I posted an article
: >to a newsgroup, and it said "Artilce Posted" at the bottom, but
: >then it crashed somehow.  I had to "kill quit PID" it from
: >root.  It quit fine with the message TIN: trap (quit) [ ya know,
: >the usual quit message].  It wouldn't respond to any keystrokes.
: >
: >Anyone else have a similar problem or know anything about this?  It
: >never happened to me with TIN116.
: 
: I had this happen to me.  It turned out to be inews that was hanging for me.  
: It was doing this because the /usr/lib/news directory had its ownership 
: changed (by me of course, shooting myself in the foot) from news to usenet (the
: admin user).  inews was hanging because it couldn't write its lock file.  It
: would time out eventually, but not after a long time.
: 
: Check the ownership and permissions on /usr/lib/news (I think that is the 
: directory) and the ownership and permissions on inews, etc.  If inews and 
: several other news programs can't write their lock files then they wait (as 
: they should; this is the reason for lockfiles!).


Ok, they're fine.  However something else strange has happened:

I'm using a relinked kernel from the DDK with Harry et al.'s bitmap
driver in there (but I doubt that would mean anything -- the driver
seems to be working fine).  I just mention that in case it matters what
version of the kernel I'm using.

Anyhow, I got up in the morning and went to read news as usual.  
comp.misc.forsale had its usual 100+ new articles, so I go in there
to read, and I hit enter at the first new article.  "Article 1250 not
available."  Ok, no problem.  So I hit "N" (read next unread article)
KABOOM!!!  small kernel explosion:

cr2=20736975
eax=20736900  ebx=400E74  ecx=FFFFFFFF  edx=FFFFFFFB
esi=432F5C  edi=20736975  ebp=7FFFED00  esp=FFFFFBE4
cs=B  ds=13  ss=13  fs=0  gs=0
err #14  eip=28525 uesp=7FFFECD8  cmd=tin
efl=11246  sigcode=#11  User Trap

And to stderr was the ominous message:
%1    3897 Memory fault       tin

Note the above problem with it locking up I had *before* I used
a relinked DDK kernel.  So I don't think the kernel is the problem.
I think it has to do with 117 specifically since I had none of these
problems with 116.

All this is probably meaningless with 118 coming out soon, so I don't
want anyone to be too upset over it.  It looks like there might be
a pointer that's out of control or something along those lines.
I'm just reporting the bug in case anyone else has a problem.

However I am leery of wnews.  I have been having some strange news
problems that are unrelated to tin that I know are being caused
by wnews.  I'll have to get off my lazy bottom and start digging
in the code I think.  Maybe this is the root of all the evil in
my CPU :-)

-Louis
--
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 Louis J. Giliberto, Jr.   ! magus@drktowr.chi.il.us
   -sysadmin drktowr       !   "I had an account at school, but the
   Chicago, IL  USA        !    quota was 300K - what's the point?
Home of DarkTower Software !    One Madonna .gif and it's over!"
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