CSWB startup problems

[Bradford Hamilton]

Hi Richard,

In all cases, X Window tunneled via SSH from VMS to a Linux laptop. Internal network allows all protocol traffic behind a firewall, where the laptop and VMS reside. I had also tested solely on the VMS machine, without resorting to the network - no luck. To re-iterate, I can also invoke Mozilla with the "-splash" option, which correctly displays a splash screen on my laptop - without displaying the browser.

I'm going to de-install/re-install JAVA next, if I don't have any other bright ideas. Both Mosaic and Netscape (which work fine) don't use JAVA, while Mozilla makes use of JAVA.

[Bradford Hamilton]

I read the documentation more carefully, and realized I didn't have to touch JAVA, so I didn't.

I'll try rebooting the system as a last resort.

[Richard Whalen]

I don't have a system running Linux, so it took me a few days to come up with something that might approximate your configuration:

I ran Microsoft Virtual PC on my Windows XP system and started Ubuntu 6.06 on that. I was able to SSH to a system running TCPware 5.8 and successfully start CSWB.

[Bradford Hamilton]

Thanks Richard,

You've been more than helpful in this thread; unfortunately, I'm still unable to use SWB, even after rebooting the system. I also picked up a freebie monitor from work, and attached it and a mouse and keyboard to my VMS system, and still experienced the same behavior on the "local" display. And all the while, Mosaic and Netscape V3.03 work fine, both "locally" and via SSH to my Linux box (Ubuntu 6.10). I also had the same issue from Windows XP/2000 using the X-window package that comes with the Pathworks CD, and Cygwin. Meanwhile, all other VMS/Motif programs (DECterm, DECClock, File Manager, etc.) all work fine locally, over SSH to Linux, and over the X-Window packages to various Windows boxes.

I guess I'm just going to give up on SWB as a "bad job", and await the next version (or Firefox, when it gets ported) :-)

Thanks again for all your help!

[Willem Grooters]

Did you install the objects, as described in the installation manual? if you, try re-installing the files.

[Bradford Hamilton]

Hi William,

Yes, I neglected to mention that the images get installed at boot time; my understanding was that installing the images saves use of process quotas. I've tried (without success) to get SWB running with and without the installed images.

Just to re-iterate, the SWB process starts, and then "hangs" after a short period of time. I've enabled debugging to see that it hangs while making all sorts of mapping calls to "The Jackets". By reading the comments in the DCL wrapper, one cause of many polling messages (which I see in the logging output) is the use of IPV6, which I don't think I'm using (unless TCPware turns it on by default - I doubt it!). I even attempted to set the logical that told Mozilla that I was using IPV6, but I still couldn't get the procedure to go past the "hanging point".

I'm just thinking now that I have some piece of software or Freeware installed that is preventing SWB from starting up, and the reason that this error is not reproducible is because most folks won't have these "extras" installed on their systems (I think the technical term for this condition is a "corner case"). :-)

Thanks again for your help.

[Willem Grooters]

Some plug-in perhaps? I don't know where to look but no doubt there will be some form of storage that holds the installed plug-in software. It might be useful to get rid of each one by one and see if that helps.

another thing: Have you cehcked user2:[vms$common.cswb.chrome.overlayinfo.navigator.content]overlays.rdf - MIND CASE! Odds are that Mozilla requires PARSE_STYLE=extended, STMLF record format, case sensitivity....

Any idea what port is polled?

[Bradford Hamilton]

Hi Willem,

The .RDF file looks to be "merely" XML "code" that lists a number of Mozilla-related websites.

I ran into a problem recently (documented here in another thread) where *installing* software with PARSE=EXTEND brought me much grief. I've been careful in this instance to install SWB with PARSE=TRAD, but I've been invoking it using PARSE=EXTEND.

As far as the STMLF "format" is concerned, I was a little flummoxed by the release notes; it was unclear to me if I needed to make sure that *all* files were STMLF, or just the ones installed by Mozilla. If the latter is intended, I'm surprised the folks who created the package didn't create code in the installation procedure to do just that!

If anyone can clear up these little mysteries for me, I might have a better idea of how to solve this problem. In the meantime, I'll try a quick de-install/re-install using PARSE=EXTEND, to see if that buys me anything.

[Richard Whalen]

TCPware doesn't implement IPv6, but it needs to tolerate some IPv6 stuff for the version of X-Windows on VMS V8.* to work. It might improve things if you can tell Mozilla to only use IPv4.

Our QA department occaisionally does installs with PARSE=EXTEND and finds interesting things. My argument is that installations should be done from the system account with as few changes to the defaults that the user can tolerate.

[Bradford Hamilton]

OK, I've gotten a little further trying to debug this problem. It seems as though Mozilla is creating a _PARENTLOCK. file in a subdirectory; if Mozilla detects that this file exists, it will not continue to start up. The Mozilla documentation *claims* that this file gets cleaned up on exit, but it does not. If I delete it "maunally" after aborting Mozilla, a new one gets created the next time I run Mozilla.

How do I get Mozilla to *not* create this file?
This is extremely frustrating.