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OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

 
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Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi

I don't suppose this will cause you guys too much of a problem but its got me baffled.

I have an old AlphaStation 4/233 running OpenVMS 7.3-2 which I use to provide me with a 'proof of concept' facility so I can support a customer. The system was working fine until the system disk failed and I reloaded from the distribution CD. I don't think I did anything different when I realoded, but since then I have been unable to log in using X in anything but failsafe mode.

The default CDE login hangs for many minutes with the white bordered blue announcement screen before eventually dropping into a patterned grey screen with a simple mouse pointer (arrow) which I can move around. There it stays ad infinitum - or at least for a few hours or until I get bored and do a field service reboot!

I can log in via the network using telnet so I can see what processes are running (or not as the case may be). In failsafe mode I have a single DECTerm which has limited use.

Can anyone suggest why I can't complete log in with CDE or DECWindows?

Cheers

Chris Smith
22 REPLIES 22
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

How many times have you run AUTOGEN since the
most recent installation? Some parameters
typically need a boost for DECwindows+ Motif+
CDE.

I seem to recall some circumstance a long
time ago where the automatic AUTOGEN which
was done as part of the installation did not
do the job, but the details are lost in the
mists.

Is there anything in any log files? For
example:

SYS$MANAGER:DECW$SERVER_0_ERROR.LOG
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Also, do you have any page file space now?

SHOW MEMORY /FILES
Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Check your disk with
$ anal/dis/read
and check for bad blocks. Did you replace the disk or just tried the failed one again ?

I already had cases were X was blocking because of bad blocks in exe files.

I init my disks with init/erase before loading it. If you are lucky, the bad blocks are detected and moved away.

Wim
Wim
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi Steven

I don't think I've run AUTOGEN manually since the system was rebuilt.

Attached are the latest decw$server_0_error.log file and a console capture of show memory /files.

Cheers

Chris
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi Wim

The original system disk died spectacularly. It was resting on top of the system unit and was hit by a falling hack-saw! The drive had to be replaced completely. However, I have just run ana/disk/read on the replacement drive. This only comes up with the usual informational message about QUOTA.SYS and several warnings about files marked for delete and the odd access conflict. Thanks for the suggestion.

Chris
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

No bets, but a 70MB page file does not sound
large to me. If you can, you might Telnet
in, and run MONITOR SYSTEM while you try to
do the X log-in. And/or, REPLY /ENABLE, and
look for nasty out-of-something messages.
And/or periodic SHOW MEMO /FILE, and watch
the "Free" page file number. (I suspect that
it heads for zero pretty fast, but what do I
know?)

Did you have a secondary page file before,
which is not being installed now?

How much physical memory is in there?

SHOW MEMO /PHYS

On my old AlpSta 200 4/233, I had the full
768MB, and about 1GB or so of page file.
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi Steven

How I would like some more memory and I guess its probably pretty cheap these days. However, this system only has 64MB.

I have increased the pagefile by a factor of 4. I've also run autogen getdata reboot without any discernable changes. The sho memo/files doesn't indicate the free pages heading for zero - far from it.

Curious!

Chris
Martin Vorlaender
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Chris,

as a workaround, you could switch from CDE to the much less resource intensive old session manager:

Edit SYS$MANAGER:DECW$PRIVATE_APPS_SETUP.COM (copy from the .TEMPLATE file if not there), and set

decw$start_new_desktop == "false"

Then restart DECwindows:

$ @SYS$MANAGER:DECW$STARTUP RESTART

cu,
Martin
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Well, I may know nothing, but the "many
minutes" part of the original complaint sure
sounds (to me) like a resource shortage (and,
apparently, a fatal one). Note that the SPD,
cd:[DWMOTIF_ALPHA0131.DOCUMENTATION]DW_V131_SPD.TXT
says:

Memory Requirements

The minimum required to install, boot, and log in is 64 MB; 128 MB is
highly recommended for more robust performance. [...]

So it should work, but you're close.

Have you looked at
Table_1-5_Minimum_Required_System_Parameter_Values_
in the DW_V131_INSTAL_GD.TXT?

MCR SYSGEN SHOW WSMAX

My DECW$PRIVATE_SERVER_SETUP.COM includes
some resource boosters:

$ decw$server_wsdef == "10240"
$ decw$server_wsquota == "16384"
$ decw$server_wsextent == "65536"
$ decw$server_page_file == "1572864"

Of course, that's on an XP1000 with 2GB of
memory, so I have more to spare than you do.
(I give my X server several times your whole
page file, for example.)

I guess that this'll learn you to have a
good image backup when you plan to wreck a
system disk.

72-pin, fast page mode, (true) parity, 60- or
70-ns, as I recall. 128MB modules are the
big ones.
Phillip Thayer
Esteemed Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Chris, Have you confirmed that the Decnet is up and running. You can Telnet into a system using TCP/IP without having Decnet running.

Also, there was some error messages about fonts not being found. Is it possible that the boot procedure is not running the Decwindows start com file correctly?

Phil
Once it's in production it's all bugs after that.
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

DECnet's pretty clearly _not_ running, but I
doubt that you need DECnet for this stuff to
work, and my log shows the same complaints
about the fonts. (The rest of the stuff
differs much from mine, but I have a GF card,
not a GY, so that might be expected. The end
looks about the same.)
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Martin

I did as you suggested and, apart from the change to the greeter, there was very little change in the symptoms. Instead of the hour-glass on the blue background I was presented with a clock face on a plain grey background. After the usual several minutes pause this changed to the patterned grey background with arrow mouse pointer.

Steven

I don't have a tape drive of any sort to make a back-up onto otherwise I would have :-)

What is puzzling me is that, as far as I can see, everything is as it was before the old system disk had a close encounter with a flying hack-saw. The login process was a little slow but I was prepared to live with that. Now the login process is of infinite length!!

Martin

No DECNET is not running. I have no use for it here and it wasn't running before the disaster.

Cheers

Chris
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Sorry, that last remark was for Phillip not Martin.

Chris
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

> I don't have a tape drive of any sort [...]

TK50 drives are cheap. (I assume that with
64MB of memory, your disk can't be very big,
either. Otherwise you might need a room-full
of tapes. And a lot of time.)

> [...] everything is as it was before [...]

Obviously it's not. The only mystery is
what you did before but haven't yet done
again.

I'd still go through the DECwindows
installation guide and check all the
parameters, but it could be something else.
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Steven

The system disk is a venerable RZ28 (2GB) and I didn't tell the whole truth - I do have a DAT drive in another system which I could remove and fit in an external enclosure. But the horse has already bolted. Maybe I should fit a lock to the stable for the future?

However ...

I noticed, late last evening, that the main difference which shows up on SHO SYS when I log in using a failsafe session is that DECW$MWM, the Motif window manager, is running. This is not running in CDE or DECwindows sessions. This must be significant but I haven't yet chased down the reason it isn't running.

I'll let you know if I stumble on anything.

And cheers to JW who is obviously monitoring this thread but hiding his light under a bushel!

Chris
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

With the "New Desktop" (CDE), the window
manager is DTWM. (The log-in guy is, I
believe, DTSESSION).

I'm still guessing that DTWM is
resource-starved to the point of death,
leaving you with a running X server but no
window manager, and no one to accept a log-in.

But it's still a guess.
Rick Retterer
Respected Contributor
Solution

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi Chris,
This may seem like a silly question, but are you doing anything in your sylogin.com or login.com that would cause the dtsession to hang upon login.

For example, are you prompting for any input within your login.com , or are you setting up a small DCL menu program from within your login procedures?

As a test, try putting a $EXIT at the very top of both SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM and SYS$LOGIN:LOGIN.COM then try logging into the CDE or Decwindows Motif session again.

If you are suddenly able to get logged into the system, then you need to redesign your login procedures so that you aren't prompting for any input, prompting the user to "press return" or executing any program directly from your login procedures.

The best place to see what is going on with your login problems is to look into the following files:

SYS$LOGIN:DECW$SM.LOG
SYS$LOGIN:[DT]STARTLOG.
SYS$LOGIN:[DT]ERRORLOG.

These log files will contain more information on login problems than the DECW$SERVER_0_ERROR.LOG files.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Rick Retterer
HP Services
Decwindows Support
Atlanta, Ga.
- Rick Retterer



Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Rick

Bless you. As soon as I read your question about LOGIN.COM a nagging thought came to me. One of the original 'proof of concept' items I was trying was a means of logging in to the system from a remote PC running 'ssh' via Cygwin or Hummingbird Exceed. This required a few lines in the login.com something like:
$ SET TERM /INSER /PERM
$ SET DISPLAY /CREATE /NODE=xxxx /TRANS=TCPIP
$ CREATE /TERM=DECTERM /DETACH

The last line was already commented out but the other two were still active. Commenting those out (I suspect only the 2nd line needed to be) and log in proceeded normally.

So, thanks a million to you and all the others who have spent some time with this problem especially Steven.

Cheers all

Chris
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Hi again

Just to expand slightly - where this system was last installed, the node in the line in LOGIN.COM was a valid node on the local network. Where the system is now installed, that is not a valid node and I suspect the $ SET command was waiting for a response it was never going to get and eventually timed out.

Thanks agin to one and all.

Chris
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

It's nice to know that someone who knows
something is looking at this stuff, too.

Would logging in as "user_name/nocommand"
help in this situation, or is the New Desktop
log-in guy too clever to be affected by this?
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

Steven

I set up an account with the offending line in login.com and tried your suggestion of username /nocommand but the symptoms persist.

I will close this thread now as I'm very happy that I now know exactly what the cause was.

Many thanks to all who participated.

Cheers

Chris
Chris Smith_23
Frequent Advisor

Re: OVMS 7.3-2 (Alpha) X login fails

See above