From: tjl@zeus02.desy.de (Tim Llewellyn)
Subject: Re: Window manager???
Reply-To: tjl@zeus02.desy.de (Tim Llewellyn)
Organization: Bristol University Particle Physics Group /ZEUS Online
Distribution: comp.os.vms
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 18:59:44 GMT

In article <RDJ.93Jan24225439@bass.world>, rdj@bass.world (Rajesh
Jathar) writes:
 
|>
|>Hi!  At the outset itself let me say that I am not a systems person,
|>but a biomed engineer struggling with this thankless task.  Having
|>got that of my chest, let me dive into the problem:
|>
|>We are a small lab using a VAX 11/780 running VMS 4.7.  We are in the
|>process of moving onto a VAXstation 3100 running VMS 5.4-1.

...good start. VMS version numbers provided...

|>Currently, I am the only person who logs on/uses that machine.  There
|>is something particularly disturbing about this machine.  I leave it
|>idle overnight, and when I go into work the next morning I find
|>thatthe window manager has crashed!  (I attribute it to the window


ahha, here you have ommitted to provide some information that is quite
likely to be relevant, namely WHAT window manager (VWS/DEC/MOTIF) and
what VERSION of the window manager. I can take a good guess what the
problem is without this information but it would be nice to know.

|>manager because I can log in from another terminal and everything
|>works fine).  The message I see on the console is that it is verifying
|>the mounting of the system disk (dka300) and sometimes another
|>(dka200) as well.  The only remedy I have at the moment is to reboot
|>the system.  I'm sure you can tell that is extremely inconvenient and
|>will be more so, when we will have upto 10 people logged on at one
|>time.  I'm sure you must have guessed by now that I am looking for a
|>way to restart the window manager (if that is what is ailing) without
|>rebooting the system.  Also how can I prevent this from happening?  Am
|>I doing something wrong like keeping too many windows open, even if
|>they are idle ( I never have more than 6 windows open at any given
|>time)?  Could it be a bad disk?  Are there any diagnostics I can run?
|>

Have you trierd the following. Either

(1) If you are running VWS, press the F2 key
or
(2) if you are running DECW or Motif, press control F2 (control first,
keep it pressed,
then press F2).

You imply you have a sepearate console and graphics monitor on your
system. Is this correct? What I have been suspecting is that the operator
messages generated by mount verification timeouts etc are being sent to
your screen via the console window. If so, the previous trick with f2 or ^F2
will do the trick.
 
|>Other clues:
|>On rebooting I found that the time was off by 12 hours (failing
|>battery back-up?)
|>I was backing some stuff up to a 1.3Gb 4mm SCSI tape drive and crashed
|>the manager because I had absent-mindedly forgotten to insert the
|>cassette (same sort of error message - verifying mount of the tape
|>drive mka500)
|>
|>I would appreciate any comments/suggestions/fixes on the topic.  Many
|>thanks in advance...
|>
|>- Raj
|>  rdj@neuro.tch.harvard.edu
|>  rdj@acs.bu.edu
|>

If my previous comments don't help you out, please supply more infomation.
Namely 

(1) Type and version of window system
(2) Hardware configuration  of your system, in particular what is the
device you
are refering to as the console, is it different to the monitor the
window system runs
on, and if so where is it connected.
(3) The output from a $ SHOW SYSTEM for the cases (a) window manager
running 
correctly (b) window manager "crashed". 



Regards

--
Tim Llewellyn			
Zeus-UK VMS guru
Soukous Addict
ZEUS02::TJL,BRSPVA::TJL,TJL@ZEUS02.DESY.DE,TJL@SIVA.BRIS.AC.UK