A step backwards

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Kurt Wall wrote:

> Also sprach Kevin O'Gorman:
> >
> > My wife's Windows software got so hosed last week that it was
> > impossible to even read a CD, to reinstall Windows.  So it was either
> > reformat the partition and start over, or install Linux.  Happily, she
> > let me install Linux, and I chose COL 3.1.1 WS.
> 
> Bonus! I gather, though, that it did not go well. :-(

Not right off, but it worked out okay, I think.

> 
> > Unfortunately, things did not go well.  I've heard this story before,
> > most recently from dep.  But this time, even though I am right here,
> > and doing the heavy lifting, I'm going to put Windows back on the
> > machine, I think.
> > 
> > The problems:
> >    Netscape that came with it ran a couple of times, got into trouble,
> >    and will no longer run.
> 
> Any clues why? No helpful output on the console or anything? I'd suspect
> Java straightaway, based on past experience. I'd also check the obvious
> things, like disk space, resource-hogging processes, yadda yadda.

No message.  No anything.  Just wedges before doing anything like putting
up a window.  I did not find anything in logs, but I may not have looked
in the right place.  I gave up on that version, and wound up with Netscape
7, and no longer can make this happen.

> 
> >    Mozilla 1.0 mail is balky, and my wife can't stand it.  I'm running
> >    fetchmail because Moz couldn't talk POP to the ISP (though that was
> >    originally working with Netscape).  Then I have MOZ using imap to
> >    get at /var/spool/mail/<her> because MOZ doesn't seem to have a
> >    Movemail.  But after reading a single email, it goes haywire and
> >    needs MOZ to be shut down and restarted or else all attempts to
> >    deal with mail get wedged forever.  I can't find anything useful
> >    in /var/log/messages or /var/log/mail.
> 
> How about an xsession log file somewhere? I don't know where Caldera puts
> them these days, but perhaps in $HOME or /var/log. Perhaps turning up the
> log level in /etc/syslog.conf will help. I don't use Mozilla's mail client,
> some I'm no help there.

Again, it was something wedged.  It disappeared when I cleansed the mail
spool file.  How it got corrupted is a mystery, as is why the corruption
caused these problems.

> 
> >    My wife is fed up.  She says it used to be fun, and this is no fun
> >    at all.
> 
> Understandable.
> 
> Kurt
> 

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD  (805) 650-6274  mailto:kevin at kosmanor.com
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