Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cons.utah.edu!kessler
From: kessler%cons.utah.edu@wasatch.utah.edu (Robert R. Kessler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: 386 Xenix 2.3.1/vpix/Compaq 20 Problem.  Help!
Keywords: hang vpix xenix computone
Message-ID: <1550@wasatch.utah.edu>
Date: 7 Apr 89 13:30:01 GMT
References: <226@ecicrl.UUCP>
Sender: news@wasatch.utah.edu
Reply-To: kessler%cons.utah.edu.UUCP@wasatch.utah.edu (Robert R. Kessler)
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 37

In article <226@ecicrl.UUCP> clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:
>One of our clients is having a severe system problem and maybe someone
>out there can help.  SCO/Computone sure can't.
>
> [Description of system]
>
>The severe problem is a complete system freezeup, ranging from 
>once or twice a week to 5 or 6 times a day.  The disk is apparently
> [ Further detailed description]

I don't know if this will help or not, but we had a similar complete
system lockup a few months back.  They have a PS/2 and ARNET board, so
I'm not sure that the problems are the same (plus they didn't and
still don't have 2.3 yet).  It turns out that the way that we had
implmented the system, was that all users logged in as the same user.
Once they got in, our own software took over and we did per login
verification.  This caused random hangups, as often as a few times per
day.  It didn't seem to be related to the number of users on the
system either.  Well, it turns out that the problem was the same
login.  Changing our system to use the gettydefs login, where the
default login is the terminal id AND making all "terminal id" users
have groups that were not root, solved the problem.  We did have to
make both changes, just making new logins didn't help since they were
all root.  (We realized the implications of everyone being root, but
it doesn't matter for our application, since our software was
protecting everyone from messing with the system).  Anyway, this
solved the problem and they no longer hangup.

We are still having problems with certain programs crashing with some
kind of memory error which causes a core dump at high utilization
times.  However, this only crashes one program, not all users.  They
are getting more memory for the machine, which might solve the
problem. 

Hope this helps.

B.