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Terminal Madness?

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  Terminal Madness? Bob Bernstein <bob@fanatick.org> - 2015-09-28 22:20 +0200
    Re: Terminal Madness? "John L. Ries" <jries@salford-systems.com> - 2015-09-28 22:40 +0200
      Re: Terminal Madness? Mike McGinn <mikemcginn@mcginnweb.net> - 2015-09-28 22:50 +0200
        Re: Terminal Madness? Stuart Longland <stuartl@longlandclan.id.au> - 2015-09-28 23:10 +0200
    Re: Terminal Madness? Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> - 2015-09-29 02:40 +0200
      Re: Terminal Madness? Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2015-09-29 09:20 +0200
    Re: Terminal Madness? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2015-09-29 08:50 +0200
    Re: Terminal Madness? Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2015-09-29 09:30 +0200
      Re: Terminal Madness? "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2015-09-29 10:50 +0200
        Re: Terminal Madness? Bob Bernstein <bob@fanatick.org> - 2015-09-29 21:40 +0200

#158397 — Terminal Madness?

I run alpine, built from source, on my Jessie:

$ uname -a
Linux debian.localdomain 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 
3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Alpine lately seems to have trouble "remembering" changes made 
by me to its config, e.g. adding new folders for additional 
remote imap hosts. That is, I make a change, such as adding a 
new folder, but if for some reason I have to exit alpine, when I 
re-launch it the changes are not there.

My fix was to delete .pinerc and launch alpine from "scratch," 
rebuilding the config I need "by hand." NOW, here you may well 
ask,

"But Bob! Surely this is a question for the alpine list, not a 
debian list, n'est-ce pas?"

But wait! Now I see my new hand-cranked config is not behaving; 
changes made are not working. I close alpine, and as I edit in 
jed the .pinerc lines that are misbehaving I notice they have 
been altered ("corrupted"). Then (my hand to God I) AS I STARE 
AT THE LINES IN JED CHARACTERS ARE CHANGING "ON THEIR OWN" 
WITHOUT ME TOUCHING A KEY.

I am in an xterm window running in icewm, and its config looks 
like this:

xterm -fg white -bg black -geometry x26 -fa 'Deja vu Sans Bold' 
-fs 24

(I've since changed to Luxi Mono just as a test of sorts.)

===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just 
change before their eyes without any intervention from the 
operator?



-- 
Bob Bernstein

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#158398

1.  Do you see any of what you describe with Debian's stock Alpine?
2.  What version of Alpine are you compiling?

I've been a regular Alpine user on all platforms (to include several Linux 
distros) since before the 1.0 release and have never seen what you 
describe.  I'm now typing this message in Alpine 2.11 under Debian/Jessie.

--------------------------|
John L. Ries              |
Salford Systems           |
Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 |
or     (435)867-8885      |
--------------------------|


On Mon, 28 Sep 2015, Bob Bernstein wrote:

> I run alpine, built from source, on my Jessie:
>
> $ uname -a
> Linux debian.localdomain 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian
> 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> Alpine lately seems to have trouble "remembering" changes made
> by me to its config, e.g. adding new folders for additional
> remote imap hosts. That is, I make a change, such as adding a
> new folder, but if for some reason I have to exit alpine, when I
> re-launch it the changes are not there.
>
> My fix was to delete .pinerc and launch alpine from "scratch,"
> rebuilding the config I need "by hand." NOW, here you may well
> ask,
>
> "But Bob! Surely this is a question for the alpine list, not a
> debian list, n'est-ce pas?"
>
> But wait! Now I see my new hand-cranked config is not behaving;
> changes made are not working. I close alpine, and as I edit in
> jed the .pinerc lines that are misbehaving I notice they have
> been altered ("corrupted"). Then (my hand to God I) AS I STARE
> AT THE LINES IN JED CHARACTERS ARE CHANGING "ON THEIR OWN"
> WITHOUT ME TOUCHING A KEY.
>
> I am in an xterm window running in icewm, and its config looks
> like this:
>
> xterm -fg white -bg black -geometry x26 -fa 'Deja vu Sans Bold'
> -fs 24
>
> (I've since changed to Luxi Mono just as a test of sorts.)
>
> ===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just
> change before their eyes without any intervention from the
> operator?
>
>
>
> -- 
> Bob Bernstein
>
>

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#158399

I am not an alpine user, but I would make sure that there are no
instances of alpine running.

ps -ef | grep alpine

Sometimes the bear wins.

Mike

On 09/28/2015 04:26 PM, John L. Ries wrote:
> 1.  Do you see any of what you describe with Debian's stock Alpine?
> 2.  What version of Alpine are you compiling?
> 
> I've been a regular Alpine user on all platforms (to include several
> Linux distros) since before the 1.0 release and have never seen what you
> describe.  I'm now typing this message in Alpine 2.11 under Debian/Jessie.
> 
> --------------------------|
> John L. Ries              |
> Salford Systems           |
> Phone: (619)543-8880 x107 |
> or     (435)867-8885      |
> --------------------------|
> 
> 
> On Mon, 28 Sep 2015, Bob Bernstein wrote:
> 
>> I run alpine, built from source, on my Jessie:
>>
>> $ uname -a
>> Linux debian.localdomain 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian
>> 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux
>>
>> Alpine lately seems to have trouble "remembering" changes made
>> by me to its config, e.g. adding new folders for additional
>> remote imap hosts. That is, I make a change, such as adding a
>> new folder, but if for some reason I have to exit alpine, when I
>> re-launch it the changes are not there.
>>
>> My fix was to delete .pinerc and launch alpine from "scratch,"
>> rebuilding the config I need "by hand." NOW, here you may well
>> ask,
>>
>> "But Bob! Surely this is a question for the alpine list, not a
>> debian list, n'est-ce pas?"
>>
>> But wait! Now I see my new hand-cranked config is not behaving;
>> changes made are not working. I close alpine, and as I edit in
>> jed the .pinerc lines that are misbehaving I notice they have
>> been altered ("corrupted"). Then (my hand to God I) AS I STARE
>> AT THE LINES IN JED CHARACTERS ARE CHANGING "ON THEIR OWN"
>> WITHOUT ME TOUCHING A KEY.
>>
>> I am in an xterm window running in icewm, and its config looks
>> like this:
>>
>> xterm -fg white -bg black -geometry x26 -fa 'Deja vu Sans Bold'
>> -fs 24
>>
>> (I've since changed to Luxi Mono just as a test of sorts.)
>>
>> ===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just
>> change before their eyes without any intervention from the
>> operator?
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Bob Bernstein
>>
>>
> 
> 

-- 
Mike McGinn		KD2CNU
President, UU Congregation at Rock Tavern
More kidneys than eyes ** Registered Linux User 377849

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#158400

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On 29/09/15 06:44, Mike McGinn wrote:
> I am not an alpine user, but I would make sure that there are no
> instances of alpine running.
> 
> ps -ef | grep alpine

Or alternatively, see what users/processes have the file open:

$ fuser -u .pinerc

-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

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#158401

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

2015/09/29 5:18 "Bob Bernstein" <bob@fanatick.org>:
> [...]
>
> ===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just change
before their eyes without any intervention from the operator?
>

I have seen that, on failing hardware (Dying RAM and/or buffers). But I
assume your terminal is software on the machine in question, so that kind
of failure would be rather obvious in other ways.

Interesting what you find when you search the web for "EVA". (Extra
Vehicular Activity?)

As others suggest, check for parallel processes.

But change in what way, is an important question, as is whether someone in
the same physical location as you is prone to pranks.

Joel Rees

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#158406

On 2015-09-29, Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just change
> before their eyes without any intervention from the operator?
>>
> Interesting what you find when you search the web for "EVA". (Extra
> Vehicular Activity?)
>

I thought Bob was pronouncing "ever" the way they do in Brooklyn.

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#158405

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Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 04:00:30PM -0400, Bob Bernstein wrote:
> I run alpine, built from source, on my Jessie:
> 
> $ uname -a
> Linux debian.localdomain 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian
> 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

[...]

Independently of what others have said...

> But wait! Now I see my new hand-cranked config is not behaving;
> changes made are not working. I close alpine, and as I edit in jed
> the .pinerc lines that are misbehaving I notice they have been
> altered ("corrupted"). Then (my hand to God I) AS I STARE AT THE
> LINES IN JED CHARACTERS ARE CHANGING "ON THEIR OWN" WITHOUT ME
> TOUCHING A KEY.

...this strikes me most. I haven't jed (nor have I any experience
with it), but is jed set up to re-sync with changes made to the
file behind its back? For other editors this isn't typical (at least
not by default).

So even if "anything" (perhaps some rouge instance of alpine) is
making changes to the file, why/how should jed display those "real
time"?

That said, lsof would tell you which processes hold a file open
at a given time.

Bizarre, to put it mildly :-)

regards
- -- tomás
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#158407

On 2015-09-28, Bob Bernstein <bob@fanatick.org> wrote:
>
> I am in an xterm window running in icewm, and its config looks 
> like this:
>
> xterm -fg white -bg black -geometry x26 -fa 'Deja vu Sans Bold' 
> -fs 24
>
> (I've since changed to Luxi Mono just as a test of sorts.)

I would have tried another text editor.

>===> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just 
> change before their eyes without any intervention from the 
> operator?
>

I've seen things I thought were there that weren't, due to the internal
state of my machine. 

(I suppose you've verified by the usual procedures that no other
instances of alpine are running.)

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#158409

Hi,

Curt wrote:
> I've seen things I thought were there that weren't, due to the internal
> state of my machine. 

And then there is mad hardware ...

I understand from the initial mail of this thread that
alpine is more victim than offender. Being one of its
users myself i can say that jed is not especially related
to alpine.
Nevertheless both, alpine and jed, show unexplained behavior
with the alpine configuration file .pinerc .


Bob Bernstein wrote:
> [...] I edit in jed the .pinerc [...]
> AS I STARE AT THE LINES IN JED CHARACTERS ARE CHANGING "ON THEIR
> OWN" WITHOUT ME TOUCHING A KEY.

Are these changes in any way senseful ? (Or is it random noise ?)

Do they only happen while alpine or jed access the .pinerc file ?
(E.g. watch .pinerc by md5sum whether it changes on its own.)

The proposals to look by "fuser" and "lsof" for other processes
accessing the .pinrec file are in any case worth a try.


> Has anyone EVA seen text file characters in an editor just change
> before their eyes without any intervention from the operator?

There are collaborative editors which show this behavior when
other people edit the same file (normally by the same editor).
But http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/features.html does not bragg with
such a capability.

You could make tests for that feature:

- Use jed to edit the same file in two different terminals
  at the same time.

- While editing a file by jed, alter its content by external means.
  E.g.
    echo "Hello jed. Do you see this ?" >> the_file


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#158423

I wish I could post a [SOLVED] message for this thread, but due 
to being a tad under the weather I cannot.

Thanks to all who chimed in. I have convinced myself that no 
other instances of alpine have been running, and the .pinerc 
file was not being opened by any other process. I know this is 
to barely scratch the surface, but for now I am going to stand 
pat and hope for the best.

Thanks,


-- 
Bob Bernstein

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