roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (04/25/91)
Over the past week or two, I've imposed on this group a couple of
times to help me unravel the mysteries of why my new FastPath-4 didn't work
right. My latest plea for help was answered by tom@wcc.oz.au (Tom Evans)
who did a detailed analysis of the atalkatab file I posted, spotting
several things which looked suspicious. Unfortunately, none of them were
the problem. It's not really Tom's fault, though, since I didn't supply
him with the data he really needed to find what was wrong, my FastPath
Manager config file.
To make a long story short, I was using 55.1 as my IPTalk network,
but I had typed 14080 into the FPM configuration instead of 14081. I must
have looked at that 100 times over the past few days and didn't spot it.
It was discovered by Arnie at Shiva Tech Support, after I faxed him copies
off all my config files, and an extract of an tcpdump trace showing the
fastpath repeatedly arping for its own address (one arp request in response
to every at-nbp packet sent to it). I'm not sure how I feel about Shiva at
this point. The NY Times on occasion gives out apples and worms on their
editorial page to people they feel deserve them. I'll do the same.
A big ugly slimey worm to Shiva for shipping the FP-4 boxes with a
version of FastPath Manager that not only just plain doesn't work, but is
so obviously and grossly defective that it never should have left alpha
test. Manager 5.1 is so buggy I don't know where to begin. You type stuff
into fields and it forgets what you've typed. FastPaths loaded with it
forget their names. FPM itself bombs (Application Unexpectedly Quit,
except after a while it wasn't too unexpected any more). Shiva Tech Suport
had me going around in circles trying every permutation of editing, saving,
and re-opening the config file before they admitted to me they already knew
how bad it was and had a new version they could give me.
An apple to Shiva for making FPM 5.2.1 and K-STAR 8.1.1 available
for anonymous ftp; at least I was able to get the new versions the same
day.
An apple to Shiva tech support for suggesting that I just print out
all my config files and fax them to him; much easier than reading him all
the info.
A worm to tech support for taking 2 days to return my multiple
calls after faxing him the stuff.
A big apple to tech support for spotting what was wrong with the
config file.
A worm to tech support for giving me vague and nebulous answers to
some of my questions. He wanted me to put 5 and 5 in for the Range Start
and Range End parameters in the EtherTalk Phase 2 configuration box, but
couldn't tell me what those numbers meant. All he would say is that you
need them to make transition bridges work and that it doesn't matter what
the numbers are, and I should just trust him and use 5 and 5. I even read
to him in the manual where it says that they are network numbers and must
be unique in the Internet, which I took to mean I should ask our local
network czar to assign me some numbers to use instead of picking them out
of thin air, but he kept insisting that I should just trust him and I have
to use 5 and 5 to make it work.
And, finally, a very large, bright red, shiny and delicious apple
to everybody on the net who so patiently answered my many questions and
helped me through this ordeal.
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"