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| March 2000 | Get BSD | New to BSD? | Search BSD | Submit News | FAQ | Contact Us | Join Us |
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The lions may come, and the lambs may go, but your questions just keep marching on...
When I compile programs, I get random irreproducible SEGFAULTS in cc1. Help!
My server PC runs great for a while but then mysteriously freezes solid! Argh!
Please get me started accessing BSD files from WIN98 with samba...
Here's the scoop on the Logitech Marble Mouse.
How can I eject a floppy disk under program control?
What scripts are run when I type reboot, or shutdown -r now and similar commands?
How do I mount an ISO 9660 filesystem?
How do I give non-root users access so they can run X?
Can't PINE be set up to know the hostname explicitly?
How do I print to my NT server machine's printer?
And now the proverbial lamb-skin mailbag.
Q:
When I compile programs, I get random irreproducible signal 11's in cc1. Help!
A:
The most likely cause is that some of the memory in your system is starting
to go bad, so you could try running a memory tester like
Memtest86,
or just start swapping out memory to see if the problem goes away.
Another possible cause is that you're overclocking your system and some of your memory can't keep up, so it behaves as if it were going bad. Read on...
Q:
My server PC runs great for a while but then mysteriously freezes solid! Argh!
A:
Something like this just took out my machine room for a month, so let me guess:
with only a couple clients it never has any trouble, but with about four
or more clients and a mixture of steady but light net/disk/cpu activity it
will just hang solid every now and then.
It resets and reboots fine and never has trouble fixing the filesystems.
No single resource on the server is ever running low (or even close) around
the time of the failures.
Swapping out hardware sometimes makes it go away for a while, but it eventually
comes back.
Based on what I've just been through, I'd say something in your server is being overclocked, even if you didn't do it deliberately. You'll need to figure out what it is and correct it. Then, to make the fix permanent, you may need to get your entire machine to "charge down" by disconnecting it from anything that has its own power source and letting the box sit for a while (read: ten minutes or so). This is especially important with ATX power supplies that have only the soft-on power switch and no real power switch.
In my case, it was a PPro server motherboard with only one set of jumpers for the CPU speed, and a BIOS that apparently is not fully compatible with the Pentium II Overdrive upgrade that I put in this beast. I've got ample evidence that the BIOS was incorrectly autosetting the CPU interface frequency at the higher speed settings because it was confused by the upgrade. (Maybe this is why modern motherboards have you set both the CPU interface frequency and core clock multiplier explicitly with jumpers.) In particular, when your BIOS says it is talking to the CPU at 66 mhz but then switches to 75 mhz on the next cold boot (even though you haven't changed any jumpers), be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Until I can find a BIOS upgrade, it'll be running at the slower speed which has so far proven to work reliably (except when the machine needs to be charged down -- this is why it took so long to find a test case that proved what was wrong). My searches have turned up depressingly little on this hardware configuration, other than an Intel compatibility page and a Tom's Hardware Rant about the late availability and lack of strong motherboard support for this CPU upgrade.
A:
First off,
SAMBA
is primarily a server module, so while your BSD systems can use
smbclient to access files with samba, they can not use it
to get at each other's disks as easily as they can with NFS.
This would require an
smbfs
kernel module, which apparently some folks have cobbled together for Linux
and the samba team has now taken over maintenance of it.
However, your PC's should be able to get at the BSD systems' disks once samba is running correctly on them. The best place to start is the main (US mirror, anyway) samba documentation page. Check this post for a quick-start example configuration file. Good luck.
Q.
Here's the scoop on the Logitech Marble Mouse.
A:
A reader writes in:
The Logitech Marble Mouse is a PS/2 2-button trackball that comes without any drivers at all. It's just a plain old generic PS/2 mouse as far as any OS I run is concerned (OS/2, various DOS, windows crap, Linux, BeOS, Solaris, and FreeBSD).
The "gpm"-ish console mode mouse drivers work fine, and under XFree86 I just enable "emulate three-button" mode. Mouse button three (that is, buttons 1 & 2 simultaneously) worked even when I swapped some out for previous 3-button mice.
No additional drivers or configuration are needed for the Marble Mouse.
A:
Sorry, but there's no way to do this with the standard PC floppy drive.
Unlike older Macintosh floppies, it has no software controlled eject mechanism.
Your best bet is to explore the PC's BIOS and see if you can change the boot order to check the floppy last instead of first. Some (but not all) BIOS's will let you do that.
Q:
What scripts are run when I type reboot, or shutdown -r now and similar commands?
A:
Actually there aren't any; reboot and shutdown are C programs.
You can always modify their source, or simply rename them and put a small script in their place which does whatever you want before using exec to hand control to the C program.
Q.
How do I mount an ISO 9660 filesystem?
A:
With the NetBSD version of vnconfig it is
quite easy
(here's a
HOWTO version).
With the FreeBSD one however, it looks like you'll need to mess with
disklabel which is unfortunately a daunting task.
(If any FreeBSD users out there have tips on this, please send 'em in.)
Q.
How do I give non-root users access so they can run X?
A:
Have them try startx.
That is supposed to supply default .xinitrc files and other stuff as
needed to get X up and running.
If problems for non-root users persist, then perhaps you have a framebuffer or mouse device that is not readable/writable by normal users, or your kernel is compiled for tight security and will not let the X server do everything it needs to do unless it is run by root. In that case, you will probably need to build a new kernel with
options INSECUREadded to the kernel's configuration file.
Q.
Can't PINE be set up to know the hostname explicitly?
A:
It turns out that it can; someone wrote in to mention that .pinerc
has an option to let you set the hostname for
PINE
to use.
I think he's talking about the user-domain= line in .pinerc,
but I don't use
PINE
myself so I haven't tested it.
Editor's note: yes, I use it to set the domain name to daemonnews.org on the DaemonNews server.
Q.
How do I print to my NT server machine's printer?
A:
Try
this page.
I expect that the technique will adapt easily outside of NetBSD.
Q.
And now the proverbial lamb-skin mailbag.
A:
Do you have questions for the BSD Answer Man?
Send them to
bsd-answerman@toddpw.org.
Any email sent to this address is assumed intended for publication and
will become the property of Dæmonnews.
That's all for this month, folks.
Until next time, remember: there's no shame in asking RTFM questions any more,
because these days, there is just too much FM to R.
Todd Whitesel has been grokking computers for fun since his first grade school Apple II in 1980, and doing it for a living since 1992, when he escaped from Caltech with a B.S. degree. He helps promote Japanese Animation in America by running Registration for Anime Expo, and helps promote NetBSD by way of his NetBSD Architecture Farm.