| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52474] |
Thu, 08 February 2007 02:49 |
Nigel Wade
Messages: 286
Registered: March 1998
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Senior Member |
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JJ wrote:
>
>> Maybe I try stopping and starting the various nfs services and see if
>> that helps at all.
>
> Hey! Praise the all mighty deity of your choice!
>
> Must have just been NFS in a funky state.
>
> I stopped and restarted the NFS servers and clients and now everything
> works again. Yay! :-)
>
> Thanks Nigel.
>
> -JJ
Good, glad you got it sorted.
NFS and file locking is a mire of obscure problems and nastiness. It relies on a
lock manager running on the NFS server, and this lock manager being able to be
contacted via RPC calls. If the lock manager falls over then all the lock state
is lost and blocking requests for locks will block forever. Firewalls add a
whole new level of murkiness to the problem.
To be fair to NFS, it was never designed to handle file locking. NFS is a
stateless network file system, designed before file locking was introduced to
UNIX in any meaningful way, and file locking is inherently stateful. File
locking isn't really a part of NFS, more recently file locking is handled by
the NLM protocol and the nlockmgr RPC service. This should operate in tandem
with NFS but it is stateful and can fail for various reasons, where NFS, being
stateless, manages to continue in the way it was intended.
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@ion.le.ac.uk
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52480 is a reply to message #52479] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 09:43  |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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> Maybe I try stopping and starting the various nfs services and see if
> that helps at all.
Hey! Praise the all mighty deity of your choice!
Must have just been NFS in a funky state.
I stopped and restarted the NFS servers and clients and now everything
works again. Yay! :-)
Thanks Nigel.
-JJ
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52481 is a reply to message #52480] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 09:34 |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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> I think I'll try running the 6.0 version (I think I still have it
> around) and see if that works or not.
No, I guess 6.0 wasn't using idl_assistant, it was using adobe acrobat
reader.
In that case, I'm pretty sure it used to work fine from the non-server
machines at some point for 6.2.
Maybe I try stopping and starting the various nfs services and see if
that helps at all.
-JJ
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52482 is a reply to message #52481] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 09:25 |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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Thanks for this suggestion Nigel.
If it is NFS file locking, I'm not sure what to do. I've tried running
the 6.2 assistant, and I get the same problem as with 6.3.
I wonder if it wasn't the upgrade to 6.3 but rather some NFS quirkiness
that is causing the problem.
Maybe it was broken in 6.2 though and I just nevere noticed. Until
recently, I have predominantly used the primary server to run IDL -
except for memory hog jobs. I'm pretty sure it was working from the
other machines at some point though.
I think I'll try running the 6.0 version (I think I still have it
around) and see if that works or not.
-Jonathan
Nigel Wade wrote:
>
>
> It's probably file locking over NFS. I don't know how well this is
> implemented/supported on Solaris.
>
> idl_assistant requests advisory locks [ fcntl(fd, F_SETLKW, {type=F_RDLCK]
> on .qt/.qtrc.lock and .qt/.idl_assistantrc.lock. File locking over NFS is
> notorious for problems of this kind.
>
> Truss may be able to tell you exactly what system call is causing the program to
> hang. If I run IDL 6.2 idl_assistant here it seg. faults, and I don't have the
> 6.3 version for Solaris so I can't test it myself.
>
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52483 is a reply to message #52482] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 09:20 |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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No snow JD :-( but plenty cold. Last night at around 9:30, it was -3
(F) at our house.
I considered the 32/64 bit possibility, but I think they're all 64
bitters. I'm not sure the exacat incantation to find out, but it looks
like the idl_assistant script calls
/bin/isainfo -b
Which gives an answer of 64 on all of the machines. It looks like they
all claim they can run both 32 and 64 bit applications based on
/bin/isainfo -v
I'm afraid it might this NFS file locking issue mentioned by Nigel Wade.
-JJ
JD Smith wrote:
> Hey JJ. Snowing today?
>
> Is it possible it's a 32bit/64bit issue? Are all the machines you use IDL
> on 64bit?
>
> JD
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52484 is a reply to message #52483] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 09:18 |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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No snow JD :-( but plenty cold. Last night at around 9:30, it was -3
(F) at our house.
I considered the 32/64 bit possibility, but I think they're all 64
bitters. I'm not sure the exacat incantation to find out, but it looks
like the idl_assistant script calls
/bin/isainfo -b
Which gives an answer of 64 on all of the machines. It looks like they
all claim they can run both 32 and 64 bit applications based on
/bin/isainfo -v
I'm afraid it might this NFS file locking issue mentioned by Nigel Wade.
-JJ
JD Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:46:34 -0500, JJ wrote:
>
>
>> I have 3 sun boxes running solaris 8 (64 bit). They all share
>> /usr/local, among other things. One of the machines is the IDL license
>> server as well as an NIS server.
>>
>> After installing 6.3, I can run IDL just fine from all 3 machines, and I
>> have no trouble invoking IDL help on the primary machine, but when I try
>> to get IDL help on the other machines, after printing the message:
>
>
> Hey JJ. Snowing today?
>
> Is it possible it's a 32bit/64bit issue? Are all the machines you use IDL
> on 64bit?
>
> JD
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52493 is a reply to message #52484] |
Wed, 07 February 2007 01:40 |
Nigel Wade
Messages: 286
Registered: March 1998
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Senior Member |
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JJ wrote:
> Stranger and stranger.
>
> More info.
>
> I found that there is a ~/.assistant directory, which contains files
> like "contentdb.IDL 6.3 Help" and "indexdb.IDL 6.3 Help".
>
> There is also a ~/.qt directory, which may contain files like:
> ".idl_assistantrc.lock" and "idl_assistantrc"
>
> If I remove "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc" I can get the IDL help to start from
> one of the non-primary computers. However, when I try and exit the IDL
> help, it hangs and it does not create a new "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc".
>
> If "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc" does not exist, starting IDL help will always
> determine that it needs to reinitialize the db files in ~/.assistant
>
> This whole thing is quite annoying as I frequently work on computers
> other than the main server and am fond of using the IDL help.
>
> I'm not even sure what the .qt directory is for. I'm not sure what the
> .idl_assistantrc.lock file is doing. Behavior seems to be the same
> regardless of whether it is there or not.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Jonathan
It's probably file locking over NFS. I don't know how well this is
implemented/supported on Solaris.
idl_assistant requests advisory locks [ fcntl(fd, F_SETLKW, {type=F_RDLCK]
on .qt/.qtrc.lock and .qt/.idl_assistantrc.lock. File locking over NFS is
notorious for problems of this kind.
Truss may be able to tell you exactly what system call is causing the program to
hang. If I run IDL 6.2 idl_assistant here it seg. faults, and I don't have the
6.3 version for Solaris so I can't test it myself.
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@ion.le.ac.uk
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52495 is a reply to message #52493] |
Tue, 06 February 2007 16:00 |
JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:46:34 -0500, JJ wrote:
>
> I have 3 sun boxes running solaris 8 (64 bit). They all share
> /usr/local, among other things. One of the machines is the IDL license
> server as well as an NIS server.
>
> After installing 6.3, I can run IDL just fine from all 3 machines, and I
> have no trouble invoking IDL help on the primary machine, but when I try
> to get IDL help on the other machines, after printing the message:
Hey JJ. Snowing today?
Is it possible it's a 32bit/64bit issue? Are all the machines you use IDL
on 64bit?
JD
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| Re: Strange IDL Help probelm 6.3 [message #52499 is a reply to message #52495] |
Tue, 06 February 2007 14:07 |
JJ
Messages: 36
Registered: January 2007
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Member |
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Stranger and stranger.
More info.
I found that there is a ~/.assistant directory, which contains files
like "contentdb.IDL 6.3 Help" and "indexdb.IDL 6.3 Help".
There is also a ~/.qt directory, which may contain files like:
".idl_assistantrc.lock" and "idl_assistantrc"
If I remove "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc" I can get the IDL help to start from
one of the non-primary computers. However, when I try and exit the IDL
help, it hangs and it does not create a new "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc".
If "~/.qt/idl_assistantrc" does not exist, starting IDL help will always
determine that it needs to reinitialize the db files in ~/.assistant
This whole thing is quite annoying as I frequently work on computers
other than the main server and am fond of using the IDL help.
I'm not even sure what the .qt directory is for. I'm not sure what the
.idl_assistantrc.lock file is doing. Behavior seems to be the same
regardless of whether it is there or not.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
-Jonathan
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