chute@dartvax.UUCP (Christopher Chute) (05/24/85)
Sorry folks, still need help. My UNIX PC pulled a repeat performance, this time I tried some methods to figure out what was going on. Breifly, it started to be page bound, seemingly doing nothing, just after I had signed on. I was again trying to reset the date time from the User Agent environment. I entered the UNIX window (after many minutes waiting) and ran whodo. It showed me about 10 copies of sh being run by w1, w2, and w3. In addition w1 was running uucico, uuxqt, uucio, and cron. w2 was running ed, and w3 was *also* running cron. This kept up for over forty minutes, with my hardly getting a word in edgewise. The process ID's were at about 630 (I had just turned on my machine with a dead battery and done no meaningful work) before I tried to logout, the following were running: w1- cron, uuclean and seven copies of sh, w3- cron. I thought it odd that two copies of cron had somehow been started. Trying to logout was more interesting. Issuing shutdown (from the User Agent window) eventually yielded: panic trap vector 5 type = 0x5 pid=3 pc=0xD2E rps=0x2004 p=0x2F5CE GSR=DD00 BSRO=FC43 BSR1=0 PHYSPF=30 D0=0 D1=0 D2=2709 D3=0 D4=0 D5=0 D6=1 D7=0 A0=1B808 A1=23F48 A2=3348E A3=1E A4=1E A5=75E04 A6=70860 A7=2FF89E panic: trap I received the customary "Files Damaged - Being Repaired" (how reassuring in a clinical research environment) when I rebooted. Recall my previous news posting about: swap: rmap ovflo, lost [653,661] (incidently, responses to that panic cry have been 0) Now folks, I'm just a dumb physician using these here computers for research purposes. I bought the 7300 so I wouldn't have to speak hexadecimal too often. Forgive me if I am violating the news group with stupid questions, but I don't know what's going on and I don't know who to ask. Looks like this OS is over my head after all, despite the elegent window interface. Any leads on what I should do now (I clearly cannot trust data in such an environment until I understand what's happening) or perhaps to whom I should be sending such moans and groans, would be appreciated. Cheers, Chris Chute MD Dartmouth Medical School
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (05/28/85)
> I received the customary "Files Damaged - Being Repaired" (how reassuring > in a clinical research environment) when I rebooted. Recall my previous > news posting about: > swap: rmap ovflo, lost [653,661] > (incidently, responses to that panic cry have been 0) > > Now folks, I'm just a dumb physician using these here computers for research > purposes. I bought the 7300 so I wouldn't have to speak hexadecimal too > often. Forgive me if I am violating the news group with stupid questions, > but I don't know what's going on and I don't know who to ask. Looks like > this OS is over my head after all, despite the elegent window interface. Few, if any, OSes give clear diagnostics under all circumstances; if the system is badly wedged, there is a good chance that things that "should not happen" will, and that the diagnostics for that situation won't be intelligible to a naive user. The "rmap ovflo" message indicates that the table that the system uses to keep track of which places on the disk can be used to hold swapped-out or paged-out programs has no room for new entries; this may have happened because the system is trying to run zillions of processes. The "panic trap" message you got could also be due to a bug in the system which only occurs when the system is severely loaded. In short, there's probably a bug somewhere in the system; write down all the message it displays and call up your account representative (or whomever you're supposed to send bug reports to) and give them the information. The OS isn't over your head; it's just trying to give a full report of problems it's having. Those reports won't, of course, be comprehensible to the naive user; they're not intended to be. They're intended for service and support people. Just about any machine out there (Mac, IBM PC, Star, ...) will, if it gets stuck, give diagnostics of similar detail and incomprehensibility (the detail is what contributes to the incomprehensibility). The System V Interface Definition mentions an error message standard being worked on; presumably, such "panic" messages and the like will either say "write this stuff down and call your service representative" or will contain a code which refers you to a message in a manual which says "write this stuff down and call your service representative". As for the "Files Damaged - Being Repaired" message, well, I'd rather be told that the files were damaged and being repaired than have the system not inform me that it's repairing the files; I'd find the latter far less reassuring... Guy Harris