Unix-PC crashing during uucico

[Richard Lathwell]

In article <2277 at becker.UUCP> bdb at becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) writes:
> In article <1871 at neoucom.UUCP> wtm at neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) writes:
> |We get random crashes on our 3b1, neoucom ...
>
> 	uucico's, & all sorts of other stuff at
> 	the same time - it *never* crashes. I
> 	tend to reboot every couple of months
> 	just to dust off the memory chips, but
> 	On the other hand, I don't use the OBM,
> 	because it's a pretty flaky device.

At ECI, we have 3 3b1s: 2 are connected to our gateway (named gate in
the maps) by starlan.  gate has 3.5 meg memory (via a fully populated
Combi card), and three rs232 ports. The built-in rs232 port (tty000)
drives an Apple LaserWriter, the other two are two bidirectional connections
to our 386 that doesn't understand starlan (but the 386 supports all 8
terminals in the office). Gate's On Board Modem is directly wired to Bell
through our AT&T PDS; the 386 has a modem on one of its built-in ports
that it shares with a fax machine.

An IBM PC with a starlan card is in the net and uses all of the 3b1s
as both file servers and print servers. The 386 has an rs232 connection
to another 3b1 (named schiz because it has a DOS-73 coprocessor
that also *never* crashes) as an alternate route to the LaserWriter
via starlan to gate.

Gate's OBM handles about 150 calls per day and has done so for about
three years. When gate crashes (about once a month) we usually find
evidence of a kernel bug - "page fault in kernel", corrupted /etc/wtmp
on a block boundary, etc.

Re: *never*: Schiz made it 207 days before the electronics on its
disk fried. We've replaced the fans on all of the 3b1s as they've
died - overheating because of a dead fan hasn't fried a 3b1 yet -
they go into a reboot cycle: (Ouch! I'm hot! Power off...
Power on ... Reboot Ouch! I'm hot! Power off ... ad infinitum
until someone comes into the office and hears the poor sucker calling
Help! Help!, says "WTF?", turns off the power switch, and after letting
it cool down and running diagnostics, replaces the fan).

In other words, In ECI's collective experience, they *never* fail.
The OBM works fine - it's the path of choice to ECI.


We're running a mixture of HDB and AT&T (Convergent Technologies?)
versions of uucp (and cu, etc.). They both seem to work and I've never
seen an unrecoverable failure ascribed to either.

-- 
RHL                                              - rhl at eci386