Submission for Unix-PC

[was-John McMillan]

In article <8909140024.AA00979 at vx2.GBA.NYU.EDU> campbell at vx2.GBA.NYU.EDU (bruce dietrich-campbell) writes:
:
>I've just had a problem running pcomm.  As far as I can recall it worked
>just fine before I went on vacation.  Anyhow, I recompiled pcomm with
>the -g option and found out that it was burping on a shmget() call.
:
	This was a model example of how to provide a simple test
	to help the helper.  Thanks!  As a result, it took less than
	two minutes to answer the question:

		In the land of loadable drivers, the error message
		for executing an IPC call when it's NOT LOADED is
			Bad system call(coredump)

	WHY you're not loading the IPC driver (lipc.o) is unclear.
	It should be listed in
		/etc/lddrv/drivers
	...IFF you usually want it present.  For most of us the
	1st line in this file is:
		lipc
	Of course, you can manually load it too.

	A driver WILL BE REMOVED from this file by the BOOT CODE
	if the system crashes during the loading of the driver.
	This is a NICE way to protect the user from a lethally
	written driver -- but it can byte you if the system crashes
	for OTHER reasons during the loading of a driver.

	Also check the directory
		/etc/lddrv
	for the file
		lipc.o	.
	I recommend backing up lipc.o (to lipc.o.real, or such) and
	then copying nipc.o to lipc.o -- all in that directory.
	NIPC fixes a bug in LIPC.  Folks running the HOTLINE's LIPC
	-- that supports more messages/semaphores -- are stuck without
	a comparable NIPC at this time.  (As noted in prior comments
	thereon: you CAN alter the 'drivers' file to load 'nipc'
	instead of 'lipc', but the 'ipcs' command will fail to
	find required information as a result -- hence the COPYING above.)

john mcmillan	-- att!mtunb!jcm	-- juzz trying to help, sorry...