[comp.sys.ncr] Undying activities

TEMNGT23@ysub.ysu.edu (Lou Anschuetz) (11/21/90)

We have posted some items about this problem before, but thought we
might add some additional information.  We have now installed 1.01.01
and the patches that have virtually eliminated problems with HPSIO
buffer overflow.  We continue to have problems with Getty's that
won't die from time to time, and the only solution there continues
to be a reboot.  That is inconvenient since I am having to reboot
the Tower 32/700 four times per day -so much for family life, weekends
and vacations :-(

We also have the strange additional problem that occasionally
a person will log off and the getty will clear, but the sh script
does not die.  The next person logging into that port becomes the
previous user with all rights and privileges.  This is happening
at least once per day.  Since my users are invoking a shell script,
their exit is via a "kill -9 0" if voluntary (I stole this from an
NCR script).  If I force them off I do a "kill -1 mainpid; kill -9
anyotherpids".  In general a voluntary logoff works correctly.  The
main problem is people who hang up without going through logoff.
These sessions almost always don't die.

Not as problematic, but clearly along the same line, folks coming
in through the ethernet link who do a telnet quit, but not an
exit, will leave certain activities behind.  For example, I call
pg from the shell script.  If the ethernet user quits while the
pg is present, the pg will hang around until a reboot.  This is
not a serious problem, just lots of useless unkillable pids.

Of course it is obvious from the above discussion that kill -1 and
kill -9 by root have absolutely no effect.

Anyone who has any help for the problems will probably contribute
mightily to the salvation of my marriage.   ;-)

PS: an errno 11 on a modem port can make your machine go braindead(!)
I've had it happen twice now, both times with extensive corruption
of my /etc/passwd file (the one that is hardest to recover of course).
Any ideas on that one are also welcome.

Thanks in advance
Lou Anschuetz
root@yfn.ysu.edu
temngt23@ysub.ysu.edu
temngt23@ysub.bitnet

PPS: Thanks to all who sent me vt52 termcap info - there were some
folks whose address my machine would not let me return mail to.
Thanks in any case!