libes@nbs-amrf.UUCP (Don Libes) (03/15/85)
Symptoms: Eunice's vmsld would not produce an executable, even if there were no errors. mkdir would fail saying "couldn't create directory". Problem: Eunice uses mailboxes that are globally assigned. After running through 300000, the numbers wrap back to 1. This affects some logic in the libraries that assume new mailbox #'s are always greater than old. Comment: Turns out TWG knew about this problem, but said it happens to very few customers, since you have to stay up for a long time (or have a lot of Eunice usage) to have this happen, so they decided NOT TO TELL ANYONE about this potential problem. This happened only a few times in the past 2 years for us, so at first decided it was cosmic rays, but now that our Eunice usage has increased, its happening more frequently. Fix: TWG will send out fixes IF YOU ASK. Immediate fix is to reboot your machine. (Its also been rumored that you can do useful things like make directories and link programs from DCL, but I've never verified this.) Don Libes {seismo,umcp-cs}!nbs-amrf!libes