SUMMARY: SS10 drops dead

From: Jochen Bern (bern@penthesilea.uni-trier.de)
Date: Mon Nov 04 1996 - 19:06:19 CST


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Well, I took quite my Time on this one, and am still not done having a
Look at the suggested Patches/Tools, but I think I found what went wrong
*for me*. I wrote:

> Those of you that remember earlier Posts of mine might know that I have
> a SS10/51 on my Desk, running 4.1.3_U1B, that occasionally just freezes
> stone cold without anything to be found in the Logs. [...]
> I think that I can now see a Scheme:
> The Host is DEFINITELY much more likely to experience this Kind of
> Failure when I try to view emailed Pictures right off my Mailtool.
>
> I have several Mechanisms to do this, and it doesn't seem to matter
> whether I use xv or Imagemagick's display, Scripts started from
> .text_extras_menu, SUN Attachments or metamail (started from inside
> Mailtool, I have incoming MIME Mails converted to a SUN Attachment of
> the newly defined Type "MIME Mail"). BUT I've yet to see a xv or display
> issued from the Command Line hang the Machine.
>
> Both /tmp and /var/tmp are on the / Partition, but there's a merry 15 MB
> of Space. The Framebuffer is a cgsix. Everything original SUN Equipment.

As it turns out, all the Script Magic I've been doing was proper in
that it cleaned up all Files immediately after displaying the Mail
- BUT mailtool itself keeps Copies of doubleclicked Attachments in
/tmp until you click "Done" the next Time! With received Emails
counting by the Hundreds, and practically all Email Gizmos turned
into Attachments so that doubleclicking them would run the proper
Executable, this tends to fill /tmp rather badly. I'm still not sure
why this Kind of Filling would hang the Machine, while it stayed
up&running when / got filled by other Mechanisms (Users have some
Programs run wild at Times), but anyway. Yet another Question is why
I don't get a Warning that the Disk gets full (I run spacetool all
the Time) ...

Of course, if the defined "Open Method" produces yet other Files
(I noticed it with a gzipped File, my Open Method is to run gunzip
on it), these won't go away *at all*. Second random Observation:
If you rm those tmp Files, mailtool stays unable to open the
respective Attachment 'til you hit Done. :-}

Luckily, mailtool does respect $TMPDIR, so I'll be able to fix that
on the Fly. (I've been starting several mailtools with special Starter
Scripts anyway.)

Thanks to:
Gene Rackow <rackow@mcs.anl.gov>
Robert Gillespie <Robert.Gillespie@waii.com> ("Patch 101508")
Alan Hill <ahill@lanser.net> ("Monitor the Machine with proctools")
Edward Grimm <edgrimm@neptune.mtc.ti.com> ("/ gets filled")

Regards,
                                                                J. Bern

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