hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) (11/27/88)
ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!! It just nailed me again. I have had the pleasure of losing the last fifteen minutes of creative source generaton to it, and dad gummit, I was on a roll... This bug has been in the z editor since before there were z-plane teradactyls. It was in 3.20a, 3.40a, 3.60a and it is STILL THERE. &^%$#@! why can't he fix this sob? The way it works is one types to the bottom of the page, and somehow, there, while typing furiously, the line gets too long. Then, while one is still typing, the screen announces "cursor below page bottom" or something of that ilk. So what. But THEN the keyboard stops responding and the red power light begins to flash (no requester) and one gets the Guru. Has anyone else run into this beast? I have lost literally hours of very creative stuff this way, and have had great difficulty trying to remember what I put down. One fine day a work associate came into my office, and we discussed stuff while I typed notes into AMI using z. Just as he was wrapping up - POOF! all gone. &^%$#@! there is NO excuse for this kind of bug year after year in what is otherwise an excellent product. It seems to happen for either ram: files or df0/1: files. It strikes without warning. There seems no way to recover the text... Sooooo. Am I doing anything wrong? Is this puppy another one of those stack sensitive ogres? Does anyone have a way of dumping ram: to a disk so that portions of text can be recovered? Does anyone have a patch for this AGONIZING bug? Use email, post, chisel it in granite. Whatever, I gotta know what to do with this vampire! Thanks in advance... Howard Hull hull@hao.ucar.edu
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (11/27/88)
'Z' is a pile of bugs. I can reliably get it to crash with :1,$s/^M// My stack is 20,000 (twenty thousand bytes under the stack :->), so I don't think that's the problem... -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today? Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn busines#!rne
phils@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Philip E Staub) (11/28/88)
In article <1037@ncar.ucar.edu> hull@hao.UCAR.EDU (Howard Hull) writes: ... describes longstanding bug in z editor ... >and it is STILL THERE. &^%$#@! why can't he fix this sob? The way it works >is one types to the bottom of the page, and somehow, there, while typing >furiously, the line gets too long. Then, while one is still typing, the >screen announces "cursor below page bottom" or something of that ilk. >So what. But THEN the keyboard stops responding and the red power light >begins to flash (no requester) and one gets the Guru. Has anyone else run >into this beast? Count me in. > I have lost literally hours of very creative stuff this >way, and have had great difficulty trying to remember what I put down. Me too. >ram: files or df0/1: files. It strikes without warning. There seems no >way to recover the text... >Sooooo. Am I doing anything wrong? Is this puppy another one of those >stack sensitive ogres? I seriously doubt it. I've had it happen with both very large and very small stack sizes. > Does anyone have a way of dumping ram: to a disk so I once managed to dump memory to a disk file by calling up 'db' and doing a memory dump, redirecting output to a disk file. It didn't help a whole lot: I got a lot of scattered line fragments which took me nearly as long to re-assemble as it would have taken to rebuild the original text. > Howard Hull > hull@hao.ucar.edu If it's of any help, I usually am successful in avoiding the loss of everything by noting that I have always encountered a delay of at least a few keystrokes between the 'cur past bot' message and the crash. I make use of this knowledge to do a quick 'write', then hit ^L to redraw the screen, whenever I get the message. Somehow, this often avoids the Guru altogether. However, I too would like a fix, not a work-around. Phil -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Staub Tektronix, Inc., Vancouver, Washington 98668 phils@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM
drz@csri.toronto.edu (Jerry Zarycky) (11/28/88)
In article <3027@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >'Z' is a pile of bugs. I can reliably get it to crash with > > :1,$s/^M// > >My stack is 20,000 (twenty thousand bytes under the stack :->), so >I don't think that's the problem... >-- > Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Are you sure that it has actually crashed? I do a similar operation on some text files (usually transferred via Xmodem) to get rid of the extra carriage returns and I am always amazed at how bloody long it takes to do so. I have also thought that it had crashed because the keyboard had frozen, but it hadn't quite finished yet. Does your 'Z' actually summon the guru, or do you kill it? Jerry Zarycky Usenet: {uunet,watmath}!csri.toronto.edu!drz CSNET: drz@csri.toronto.edu EAN: drz@csri.toronto.cdn BITNET: drz@csri.utoronto
phils%tekigm2.tek.com%CERNVAX.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (11/29/88)
In article <1037@ncar.ucar.edu> hull@hao.UCAR.EDU (Howard Hull) writes: .. describes longstanding bug in z editor ... >and it is STILL THERE. &^%$#@! why can't he fix this sob? The way it works >is one types to the bottom of the page, and somehow, there, while typing >furiously, the line gets too long. Then, while one is still typing, the >screen announces "cursor below page bottom" or something of that ilk. >So what. But THEN the keyboard stops responding and the red power light >begins to flash (no requester) and one gets the Guru. Has anyone else run >into this beast? Count me in. > I have lost literally hours of very creative stuff this >way, and have had great difficulty trying to remember what I put down. Me too. >ram: files or df0/1: files. It strikes without warning. There seems no >way to recover the text... >Sooooo. Am I doing anything wrong? Is this puppy another one of those >stack sensitive ogres? I seriously doubt it. I've had it happen with both very large and very small stack sizes. > Does anyone have a way of dumping ram: to a disk so I once managed to dump memory to a disk file by calling up 'db' and doing a memory dump, redirecting output to a disk file. It didn't help a whole lot: I got a lot of scattered line fragments which took me nearly as long to re-assemble as it would have taken to rebuild the original text. > Howard Hull > hull@hao.ucar.edu If it's of any help, I usually am successful in avoiding the loss of everything by noting that I have always encountered a delay of at least a few keystrokes between the 'cur past bot' message and the crash. I make use of this knowledge to do a quick 'write', then hit ^L to redraw the screen, whenever I get the message. Somehow, this often avoids the Guru altogether. However, I too would like a fix, not a work-around. Phil -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phil Staub Tektronix, Inc., Vancouver, Washington 98668 phils@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (11/30/88)
In article <8811281959.AA18684@harbord.csri.toronto.edu>, drz@csri.toronto.edu (Jerry Zarycky) writes: > In article <3027@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > >'Z' is a pile of bugs. I can reliably get it to crash with > > :1,$s/^M// > Are you sure that it has actually crashed? > Does your 'Z' actually summon the guru, or do you kill it? Software Error, Task Held. Sorry, good buddy. I've sent out a couple of copies of 'ed', which is a PD implementation of the UNIX 'ed' editor in 'C'. Some day one of the folks I've sent it to will come back with a version of 'vi' based on it. That's what they said, anyway. I don't have the time... sigh. Anyone else want a copy? -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today? Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn busines#!rne