[Xastir] more map stuff

[Jim Shorney]

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On Wed, 28 May 2003 20:34:49 -0700, Chris Bell wrote:

>
>One thing you can try is the "-i" command line switch to xastir, this
>installs a private colormap.  Then our older 8-bit color systems can
>display more colors.  [I use mostly old suns, most have 8bit color,
>and work just fine thankyou!]


Thanks, I'll see if that impacts anything else.  The only impact it had
on terra/topo is that they are all gray now.  I probably have something
else that needs an update somewhere, just haven't had the time to do
it.  Terraserver *did* work at one point in the past.


>Can't help much with the crashing... do you mean the app crashes or
>the whole X server process?   Do other apps behave the same, or just
>xastir?  error messages?  


I've seen both happen - Xastir will dive out and leave everything else
running, or (more often) the entire X system will go away.  This IMHO
is not an Xastir problem, as other graphically busy apps (lavaps, for
one) can trigger similar behavior.  It seems to be a memory handling
problem somewhere in the underlying code that runs the microchannel
architecture.  If it crashes with X on the screen, the image will
remain frozen on the screen and the keyboard/mouse are non-responsive. 
I can telnet in, and ps -A tells me that no graphical processes are
running, but the only thing to do at this point is a remote reboot.

If I let the box sit at a console tty prompt, that extends the uptime
somewhat, but it will eventually still crash.  What's more, it corrupts
the video on the tty when it crashes (but other ALT-Fn ttys are still
OK).

No error messages that seem meaningful.

Other strange behavior: Seti at home or Distributed.net clients cause all
sorts of strangeness with whatever else is running on the machine,
adding fuel to the memory handling theory.

All of this has been duplicated on two other nearly identically
configured PS/2 9595 machines, with both IBM XGA-2 and Cirrus-based
SVGA microchannel video cards.

FWIW, this is an IBM Server 500, basically a PS/2 9595 machine built
into a huge battleship RAID array server cabinet.  Sure as he!! looks
impressive.  64 MB RAM (and rarely hits swap), P180 classic at the
moment.

I really love these old machines; they are bulletproof and absolutely
RFI quiet, and perform extremely well for the vintage.  Unfortunatly,
no one seems interested in looking at the microchannel Linux code for
these 'obsolete' boxen, and I'm no programmer.

</whine>

OK, I'll stop now and go ponder the implications of Linux on a
PC300xl....

Thanks again, Chris, es 73...

- --
Jim Shorney      -->.<--Put complaints in this box
jshorney at inebraska.com
nu0c at amsat.org
Ham Radio NU0C
Lincoln, NE, USA
EN10PT
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/jshorney/
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