flip@comhex.UUCP (The Flip) (08/28/89)
I was playing Nethack one day, when I was suddenly getting that occasional "Null missing...etc" error, so I saved it...when I tried to reload it, I was told that the save file was missing, and when given the --More-- prompt, nothing would happen; it would just sit there, so I logged off...the next time I tried playing again, I was sent to the Nethack welcome screen prompt (no more file-saving problems), and when I was asked to pick a character (YNQ), I tried "y" and "n", but nothing happened...however, when I pushed "q", the quit command worked, and I exited Nethack...so I tried Nethack again, this time trying "Y" and "N" (note the upper case), and it accepted those characters...however, when asked what character I wished to be, once again my input would not be accepted unless I used upper case... So the game started, I was in a room with my neato pet. But, when I tried to turn time on with "O", I was told that "Unknown command 'M-O'"...M-O? Same thing with the pickup command; that didn't work either...HOWEVER, when I typed "i", I was given my inventory, but once again at the --More-- prompt, the game wouldn't accept my <space> or <cr> key, so I had to drop carrier again...I've told the SysOp about the problem, and it looks like this is just an isolated case; I am the only one with this problem on the BBS...SysOp didn't know what caused the problem though, which is why I've posted here...you're my last hope...I'm playing 3.0f PL2 on an AT&T 3B1...
simcha@kurz-ai.UUCP (Simcha Lerner) (08/28/89)
I believe the key to this is the "M-O" response. NH3 now has
the concept of meta characters for when the 8th bit is
set. I have no idea what turns on this processing, but
I suspect that if you log in with 7 bit characters, null parity,
your problems go away.
--
Simcha Lerner
Kurzweil Applied Intelligence
PLEASE NOTE ADDRESS: NO RETURN MAIL VIA bbn PLEASE
UUCP address: kurz-ai!simcha@talcott.harvard.edu
or: ...{uunet,rutgers,ames}!harvard!talcott!kurz-ai!simchatom@cyclone.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Holub) (03/10/91)
In article <2346@aber-cs.UUCP> aag@cs.aber.ac.uk (Angela Gilham) writes: >I run a copy of nethack on a dec system running Ultrix >4.0. It lives in my area of the filesystem and runs fine >for me. Unfortunately, for many other people this is not >the case. The two most common problems are that when a >game is started it immediately crashes leaving a zero >size core dump in my files or somebody gets down a couple >of levels and the game crashes when they try to go down >another level with a message like: > "DISC LIMIT REACHED (/mntda/aa_az) - WRITE FAILED > Suddenly, the dungeon collapses." How does your system handle disk quotas? If your quota is more generous than most people's, that could explain it. I'm assuming that /mntda/aa_az is the Nethack playgound. The problem is, Nethack gobbles disk space. Every time you go down a level, a file called <playername>.<levelnum> is created in the playground directory. This file contains all the monsters, treasures, etc., that are on that level. I'm pretty sure that Nethack will try to use the uid of the person playing, whether it's setuid or not. So, if someone near their quota tries to play, and creating the <playername>.<levelnum> file would push them over, your system won't let them create the file, and Nethack dies. If this is the problem, there's no easy way to handle it. If Nethack isn't setuid, you could try changing it to setuid, but I don't think that'll do it. Other than that, you could create a 'games' account with a generous quota that people could use to play Nethack (or any other game). Or expand everybody's quotas. -Tom
chris@iesd.auc.dk (Christian J. Callsen) (03/10/91)
>>>>> On 10 Mar 91 00:09:11 GMT, tom@cyclone.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Holub) said: Tom> In article <2346@aber-cs.UUCP> aag@cs.aber.ac.uk (Angela Gilham) writes: Tom> If this is the problem, there's no easy way to handle it. If Nethack isn't Tom> setuid, you could try changing it to setuid, but I don't think that'll do it. It works with set-uid, actually. We used to run it setuid, but thanks to our administration, we run it with setgid and some other things, which should make it more secure. Tom> Other than that, you could create a 'games' account with a generous Tom> quota that people could use to play Nethack (or any other game). Also a good idea - if you can convince the administration. If they are reluctant, your could run games from 4pm->8am, and with low priority. Tom> Or expand everybody's quotas. Now, that would be nice. Or even remove quotas. -Chris
choke@wet.UUCP (Sean Gallaty) (03/12/91)
In article <2346@aber-cs.UUCP> aag@cs.aber.ac.uk (Angela Gilham) writes: >I run a copy of nethack on a dec system running Ultrix >4.0. It lives in my area of the filesystem and runs fine >for me. Unfortunately, for many other people this is not >the case. The two most common problems are that when a [...] I would perhaps suggest that you get the game installed properly by the sysadmin instead of wasting file space with redundant copies? If you want to misbehave, compile nethack to use /usr/spool/uucppublic or /tmp as it's home dir. I hope that your system administrator reads this newsgroup too.