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000339_news@newsmaster….columbia.edu _Tue Nov 24 10:13:32 1998.msg
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From: "Joseph L. Kaiser" <jlkaiser@ouray.cudenver.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kermit.misc,de.alt.comm.mgetty
Subject: At Wit's End on system freezes
Date: 24 Nov 1998 15:13:25 GMT
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Xref: news.columbia.edu comp.protocols.kermit.misc:9546 de.alt.comm.mgetty:8186
Hi,
This is addressed to whoever can help. I am at my wit's end. I am the
systems administrator for a small medical transcription company in
Golden, Colorado. We are running RedHat Linux 4.2 with the 2.23.30
kernel. I have a set of four Zoom modems on a RocketPort 16 port PCI
board; the modems are used for both dialout (sending completed work to
clients) and dialin (receiving work from transcriptionists) and are on a
rollover line so they are accessed in sequence. We are using "mgetty"
1.1.15 for the getty processes on all of the modems and we use Kermit
6.1 for all the dialout scripting and the dialin file transfer programs.
The problem is, in short, that my system periodically freezes and it
appears to be as a result of just Kermit or Kermit and mgetty.
The history of the problem is this. We upgraded to RedHat 4.2 and a new
ethernet network. The modems were attached to the serial ports of the
nodes of the network (4) for various and sundry reasons. The system
would freeze/crash so that I would have to reboot anywhere about every
3-10 days. We pulled the modems in July and put them all on the
Rocketport on the main server. The system began to freeze about 1-5
times a day and I had to reboot that often. I started to rule things
out. I obtained the latest and greatest RocketPort driver. The
behavior stayed the same. I played with the initialization strings in
mgetty and the behavior stayed the same. In the middle of all this, I
discovered that if I turned on and off the offending modem my system
"unfroze" without rebooting. This saved a lot of time and frustration
for all concerned. I then sought to find out what made a modem an
offending modem. It appears to boil down to Kermit file transfers.
We serve approximately 14 hospitals and we dial in to those hospitals
3-4 time each every day. The scripts for doing this are automated.
Frequently, a send will fail in some way, the login procedure won't go
to completion, a prompt will be missed, or a file transfer will fail
repeatedly, all of these require that the script be started over.
Sometimes when the script is restarted and the modem is then accessed
the system freezes, as if the modem is already being used but no lock
file exists. Also, it may fail if a send has left the modem in an
unstable(?) state and someone connects to the modem rather than
quitting. It is almost always the case that the system freezes when we
try to do something with a send that has stalled, i.e. when we try to
get a C-Kermit prompt with our escape character or we try to connect to
the modem. (By stalled I mean it looks like it has accessed the modem
but it does not dial or initialize the modem.) If a send has stalled
and I go to kill the process as root or the user kills the process, the
system also freezes.
As a result of all this I started to look at the script files that we
use. The script files create their own initialization, we don't use the
ckermit.ini files for initialization, so I have played with that,
changing the initialization parameters, playing with the modem
initialization string, etc. etc. etc., and the problem remains.
I have posted this to de.alt.comm.mgetty because I am still not sure if
this is some behavior that "mgetty" displays. If it does not, please
ignore this posting in de.alt.comm.mgetty.
I think that is pretty much it. If you have any ideas at all I would
very much appreciate hearing them. If anyone needs more detail, I can
supply it. I have exhausted all other resources; you're my only hope
Obi-Wans.
Please post here or you can email me at jkaiser@execumed.com.
Thank you very much,
Joe Kaiser