At 06:56 PM 1/27/04 , Mykal Funk wrote:
>On Tuesday, January 27, 2004 16:42 EST, "Timothy A. Musson"
><timothy.musson@zin-tech.com> wrote:
>
>> At 03:59 PM 1/27/04 , Mykal Funk wrote:
>

>Yes and No. Some of the data is in M$ Office, some in other oddball formats.
>As for X... my tastes run to older hardware and command line interfaces.

Well, the suggestion was really to install it on your main machine and use
it to convert documents to plain text, but I guess Office can probably do
that, too.


>> What code?
>
>anything... i was working with pine and fetchmail, in particular

OK


>If i'm telnetting, the session simple stops responding. No error messages
>The machine refuses to respond to a request for another session. When i
>go to the box and physically look at what box is printing to the screen,
>i find that is has rebooted itself. The machine has already dropped into

OK. That wasn't clear before.

>single user mode with warning messages scattered through the boot messages.
>I run the requested command, reboot back into multiuser mode and everything
>is fine. I admit that i am unsure as to how i can capture the what has
>already
>been printed to the screen after the dmegs output but before the login
>prompt.

Have you checked the log files under /var/log/  ?



>After crashing the box via telnet three or four time, i enter the same
>commands that caused the telnet crash, directly into the system. The
>compile of fetchmail preceded further that when telnet stopped responded.

To be expected, because it probably didn't lose much of its progress. It
was probably picking up from where it left off.

>then the system printed 'Memory Fault (core dumped)'. Nothing else. I
>looked around the system for a file name *.core, as i had found on a
>previous another. Perhaps i am just too inexperienced to properly capture
>a core dump.

man find (look at the --name option)
Start a search from the root dir.

>I've download the software, but i have to wait until i've sent this message
>so
>i can build it.

There should also be a floppy disk image (saves compile time and is great
for putting in the troubleshooting bag).

>Tim, you've been a great help. As i have written this reply, i have been
>able to more clearly define the problem. The result is that i have learned

Glad to help. One of the hardest things to learn is what info is relevant
to include when asking for help. Including too much or too little will
cause a number of people to ignore the request (but, there are more
tolerant people on the netbsd-help list than on many other lists).

>several very good troubleshooting techniques and discovered the problem.
>The telnet client that shipped with bill95 is buggy. Somehow it causes
>telnetd to choke while under the heavy load of compiling software. I
>think the best and easiest solution is to chuck that telnet client and
>use another one until i am ready to chuck this OS.

Don't be too distressed (or surprised) if you find that switching telnet
clients ended up coinsiding with a temporary reprieve from the symptoms of
some other problem.

Good luck.

-Tim