| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 3249.1 | More information needed | STAR::VATNE | Peter Vatne, VMS Development | Thu Aug 23 1990 17:22 | 6 |
| Please, please, PLEASE tell us which version of VMS they are running!
When the "fileviews" disappear, do other applications on the screen
disappear?
Could you also post the contents of SYS$MANAGER:DECW$SERVER_0_ERROR.LOG?
|
| 3249.2 | Will get log data today. | MDVAX3::COOLEY | | Fri Aug 24 1990 12:45 | 61 |
|
>Please, please, PLEASE tell us which version of VMS they are running!
Sorry. It's 5.3; I just got them a 5.3-1 CD, to which they plan to
upgrade this weekend.
>When the "fileviews" disappear, do other applications on the screen
>disappear?
Yes - anything started from the FV. I dunno if any SM-started apps were
around, either before or after the event. Will check.
>Could you also post the contents of SYS$MANAGER:DECW$SERVER_0_ERROR.LOG?
Will collect a couple today, if yesterday is any indication.
There seems to be one guy getting really hammered by this - three times
yesterday. The guy next to him (his boss) is doing the same things all
day long; no problem. Of course everyone claims that I put something in
there saying "if Gary then..."
On the plus side, Gary yesterday, while showing me the latest smoking
crater, insisted that the FV interface to all there utilities was so
much more efficient that he wouldn't think of giving up and just using
a dcl prompt... his boss loudly seconded that. A week ago both of these
guys were looking at one giantECTerm and using their myriad pre-defined
symbols to navigate, kick off utilities, etc.
I tutored Gary yesterday on adding his favorite home-grown verbs/menus
- lightbulbs popping all over!
Side comments to developers and sellers:
This is a GREAT product; it was sort of dropped on this gang of macho
programmers with no intro/training, and, of course, the initial
reaction was "who needs that stuff; I've got this login.com I invented
which creates an elegant environment - only wimps would use that". Then
of course, the performance problems inherent in having little/no idea
how to manage it, have them saying "I told you so - it's just a frilly
boat anchor which would hurt me more than help me". We will be a while
recovering some of these guys!
A 10-minute one-on-one works for many, but not if they've been burnt
and closed their minds. Result? the salesman gets blamed for selling a
high-priced memory-hogging piece of #%^&. It seems to me that the
troubleshooting guide being discussed elsewhere, and a CBI "Users intro
to the neat stuff you can do" should be very high priority. Then nobody
should sell it without insisting on the users being exposed to the
intro.
We tried to get their internal support people to pave the way with such
a tutorial, and it woefully missed the mark. The intro has got to be
prepared by people who appreciate the product; in our case, that means
other software engineers - who better than the developers!
Sorry for leaping on the soapbox here, but its frustrating to see
really good products getting a poor reception due to an incomplete
definition of the product distribution process. DEC builds great stuff,
ships it, and hopes the users appreciate it. Some of them don't
know how to unwrap it - what's the old joke about the guy complaining
that he couldn't chop trees down as fast with the chainsaw somebody gave
him?
|
| 3249.3 | | STAR::VATNE | Peter Vatne, VMS Development | Fri Aug 24 1990 16:21 | 10 |
| Thanks very much for the information and the encouragement.
First on the FileView problem: if it happens to one fellow and not another,
it does sound like quota problems. Could you also post the SYSUAF entry
for the working account and the failing account?
On documentation: I wrote a DECUS talk on "Customization in DECwindows"
that certainly be renamed "User's intro to the neat stuff you can do".
I'll discuss this with the documentation group to see if they could
turn this into a chapter in the DECwindows User's Guide.
|
| 3249.4 | Run it interactively | STAR::ORGOVAN | Vince Orgovan | Fri Aug 24 1990 20:27 | 9 |
| One other thing you could try is to run FileView interactively
from a DECterm. That way if it ACCVIOs or aborts you'll be able
to capture the information and post it here.
The process to do this is:
- remove FileView from the AutoStart list
- create a dedicated DECterm for the FileView image
- in the DECterm, just type "run sys$system:vue$master"
|
| 3249.5 | SM Log | MDVAX3::COOLEY | | Mon Aug 27 1990 17:14 | 7 |
| re -.1 and -.2: I'll follow up today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I
collected the following DECW$SW.log:
%DCL-S-SPAWNED, process GOTTLIEB_1 spawned
XIO: fatal IO error 65535 on X server "GOTLEB::0.0"
%NONAME-F-NOMSG, Message number 02DB821C
-NONAME-F-NOMSG, Message number 02DBA002
|
| 3249.6 | add'l clue? | MDVAX3::COOLEY | | Mon Aug 27 1990 17:17 | 4 |
| A ps: Gary has observed that whenever this happens, the "vanishments" are
preceded by the system forgetting what his logicals are - he sees a DCL
procedure croaking with file-not-found error messages, when minutes
before it properly translated the logical and found the file.
|
| 3249.7 | sm log | MDVAX3::COOLEY | | Fri Sep 07 1990 02:02 | 27 |
| re -.whatever, regarding account parameters:
maxjobs 0 fillm 80 bytlm 65536
maxacctjobs 0 shrflm 0 pbytlm 0
maxdetach 0 biolm 40 jtquota 2048
Prclm 10 diolm 40 wsdef 1024
prio 4 astlm 100 wsquo 2048
queprio 0 tqelm 20 wsextent 8192
cpu (none) enqlm 200 pgflquo 40000
The system manager insists all people in this group have identical
parameters. Gary sayas it hasn't happened to him in a while now;
bnnut he STILL gets the "disappearing logicals" problem.
I saw it happen to another guy yesterday, who claims it's common. I
was helping fix an lse startup command procedure problem - I tried to
open another view, and pow!
Do the error message value 65535 and the bytlm of 65536 have any
relationship? I've gotten several other sm logs which always say
"XIO fatal error 65535 on X server..."
I dunno what the message means, nor what bytlm is, but they look
interesting.
|
| 3249.8 | Bermuda Triangle of Fileviews | MDVAX3::COOLEY | | Fri Sep 07 1990 11:47 | 32 |
| This may be a related question, may be something else entirely.
I've observed that various utiliies when started from fileview have
slightly different behavior with respect to the "stop task"/"dismiss"
widget. Most simply go away when you click "stop task". Some take the
parent fileview with them. I've assumed that this was sloppy
programming (since I THINK all the nasty ones are dcl procedures I
wrote or untrained customer-types wrote). If the same application is
allowed to complete (ie, let the widget change to "dismiss", then
you're ok. The problem ones are generally cases where the verb executes
a dcl procedure, like "monitor process" or something. It's necessary to
give the ctrl/z within the popped-up dcl window to "terminate" the
function (ie, if it were a dumb terminal, get the dcl prompt back) to
get the "dismiss" button.
I thought this was sloppy programming, and figured I needed to RTFM,
or get the customer to, but I have just tried to duplicate the problem
on my standalone system, and cannot. So now I suspect it may be more of
an idiosyncracy of their installation, related to this basenote. I've
also not been able to get fileviews to blow away on my standalone,
although its harder to know what should make it happen. I created some
40+ fileviews and decterms, juggled them all over the place, iconized,
stretched, squeezed, etc as fast as I could. Solid as a rock. Same
distribution CD!
My parameters are generally much lower than are the customer's except
for enqlm, which I have at 2000 (dunno why - I guess some application
wanted it that way).
This is a mystery well worth solving - the product CAN be solid, but
the customer sees it as fragile. We (DEC) can't tell them why.
|
| 3249.9 | Still hoping for a miracle... | REDBRD::COOLEY | | Thu Sep 20 1990 00:05 | 17 |
| This occurred twice today in rapid succession to the department head. I
was trying to talk him through some stuff on the phone - had several
fileviews up, and pow. He started a new fileview, got about two or
three steps into the process we were doing, and again pow. I had him
logout/in, then it was ok. Ths DECW$SM log had the same error message
as the others posted here previously.
Isn't ANYBODY out there seeing this behavior?
Doesn't ANYBODY have a suggestion?
Incidentally, the other day i was attempting to start a new fileview
and got a reasonably polite "you have exceeded your bytlm" message, and
had to log out/in to proceed.
Don Cooley
|
| 3249.10 | yeh, we're seeing the problem, but what do you want from us users? | CVG::PETTENGILL | mulp | Thu Sep 20 1990 04:44 | 7 |
| No, you're not alone. No, you're not crazy. There is at least one real problem.
If this is happening with a customer, then you need to pursue it thru your
normal channels, whatever those are. I don't think anyone has any explanation,
or fix, for the problem. I should QAR it, but this problem requires more
investigation than I can afford and it is lower in priority than the 6-8 other
QARs I've entered today. Please pursue it; I'd love to see a fix.
|
| 3249.11 | May not help, but... | BIGHRN::RAVEY | | Thu Oct 04 1990 03:10 | 25 |
| I know this is probably old news, but I was catching up on this
conference and, having recently read the DECwindows release notes,
thought I might add my 2 cents worth...
The release notes mention the quotas that are check by FileView with
the most critical being Prclm, Bytlm, and Pgflquo.
Each application runs a variety of subprocesses, thus Prclm (process
limit) should be a rather high number. On my 3100, I have it set to 64.
FileView requires a Bytlm of abut 10000 to run, with an additional 5000
for each application. On my machine, where I do a lot of graphics and
display intensive applications, by Bytlm is 512000.
The most insidious parameter is Pgflquo. Most applications don't start
to consume Pgflquo until they're running. When the limit is reached,
the application will crash. On my machine, I have it set to 80000.
This may have nothing to do with your problem, but it would appear that
the quota's shown in .7 could be increased.
Good luck!
Ron Ravey
|