Precedence Network Computer and NetManager
Errors/Bugs on the NetManager

  1. The NetManager is complaining about root device full

    This is serious. If you log in as root and type df you get a listing of the amount of space on the filesystems: e.g. 
    Filesystem   1K-blocks    Used    Avail   Capacity   Mounted on 
/dev/wd0a       121887   19976    95816      17%     /
/dev/wd0e      1348877  205863  1075570      16%     /usr
    As you can see, in the listing above there is lots of space free. However, the filesystems will get fuller. For example, log files will be generated in /var/log. Processes belonging to normal users can only fill the filesystems to 95% full, meaning that the computer will still work fine (unlike NT for instance which allows denial of service attacks along these lines). However, most processes which create log files are running as root and so they can fill up the filesystem.

    First look in /var/log and type ls -l. The full file details will be listed. File lengths are in the 5th column (before the date). Delete any large files.

    Hotfix 9 addresses common causes of this problem

    Hotfix 9 alter the following for mgetty. Builds prior to 30 have the debugging of mgetty (which listens for incoming modem connections) set to 2. This generates large log files as /var/log/log_mg.tty00. Delete this file and edit the file /etc/mgetty.config to alter the line: 

    debug 2
    to: 
    debug 0

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  2. I'm getting errors about "cannot allocate L1 page tables"

    At the current time the arm32 port of NetBSD has a fixed limit on the maximum amount of processes that can be simultaneously running. Each processes requires what is called an L1 page table. The number of current processes can alter a lot depending on what tasks the server is performing. For instance, for every web request a new child process is spawned, therefore the number of processes can quickly add up and you can run out of allocated L1 page tables. By default the limit is 192 processes. Simply waiting may fix the problems as processes end.

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  3. I log in as root at the login screen and it just returns to the login screen again.

    This is a bug in hotfix 15. To get to a textual login prompt press Alt-F1 on the NCManager. You can then log in as root. Once logged in as root you can do one of two things: You can then get back to the graphical login by pressing Alt-F9.

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  4. When I reboot my NetManager it appears to hang after it's printed "apache" during the start up.

    It's not really hung. This is an indication that your Internet connection is down. You've set some blocked URLs from the administration pages (i.e. to stop users visiting those websites). Apache looks for the IP address for those websites, so that users cannot try to bypass the block by typing in the IP instead of the normal website name. As your Internet is down, Apache is trying in vain to contact your external DNS server. It will eventually give up, so please be patient.

    Do not be tempted to stop Apache by pressing Ctrl-C as this will stop any webserving.

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