Subject: Pine Hangs

From: Rick Byers <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 16:43:16 -0500 (EST)

Hi There,
I use pine quite a bit, but I've been having a problem lately where it
hangs when doing network activity.  For example, usually when posting a
message.  I expect the server that impad is running on is under heavy
load, but isn't there any timeout?  It's very frustrating writing a long
message and then having to kill pine because it's just sitting there.  I
once left pine running all night to see if it would eventually time out -
nope - still said "Busy" and was "spinning" in the morning...

Also, are there any places with user patches/upgrades for pine?  I've
written a small one that just adds a couple of features and changes the
default behaviour of pine, but I've got a lot more I'd like to do.  I
figured I better check to see if someone allready did something like it...

Thanks,
	Rick

=========================================================================
Rick Byers                                      Internet Access Worldwide
[email-masked]                                System Admin, Tech Support
Welland, Ontario, Canada                                    (905)714-1400
http://www.iaw.on.ca/rickb/                         http://www.iaw.on.ca/

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:41:01 +0000 (GMT)

Hmmmm.... we see this "perpetually spinning busy cursor" on _some_ of our
SGI IRIX systems (but not on others).  My suspicion is that the different
patches that have been applied to the various systems probably accounts
for the discrepancy.

For us a workaround is to set the "disable-busy-alarm" feature in the
systemwide configuation file for Pine.  This disables the spinning "busy"
alarm and things work just fine.

Gut feeling is that there is some sort of "negative interaction" going on
between the once-a-second alarm timer responsible for spinning the busy
cursor and the networking code.

I've reported the problem to the Pine Team, but given it only appears to
happen on _some_ of our IRIX systems and no-one else seems to have
mentioned it (until now?) it's difficult to do anything about.

Give it a try and see if it works for you or not.  (And perhaps report the
results of your test here?)

Cheers,

-- 
Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

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From: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:55:45 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, Mike Brudenell wrote:

> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:41:01 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
> To: Rick Byers <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Pine Hangs
> 

I see it on our HP system as well as on a Solaris box, but only when I run
Pine3.95 not when I run Pine3.91, which I still preserve.

> alarm and things work just fine.

I can't find "disable-busy-alarm" in my Pine configurations; How do you
set it?

Thanks,

Joe

     _/   _/_/_/       _/             ___________    __o
     _/   _/   _/      _/         ______________    -\<,
 _/  _/   _/_/_/   _/  _/                     ......O/ O
  _/_/ oe _/   _/.  _/_/ ah         [email-masked]

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From: Rick Byers <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:05:44 -0500 (EST)

Joe,

Just add "disable-busy-alarm" to your feature list (/local/lib/pine.conf,
or ~/.pinerc should work too).  I've turned it off, and so far it's
working great (thanks Mike!).  It really didn't help much anyway...

Rick

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From: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:20:53 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, Rick Byers wrote:

> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:05:44 -0500 (EST)
> From: Rick Byers <[email-masked]>
> To: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Pine Hangs
> 
> Joe,
> 

I added it on a line by itself, but it didn't make a difference.

Thank you for the reply anyway,

Joe

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:20:27 +0000 (GMT)

Regarding my posting about trying the "disable-busy-alarm" configuration
setting if you're experiencing hangs in Pine with a perpetually spinning
"busy cursor"...

The "disable-busy-alarm" item is a hidden configuration option for, I
guess, debugging tests (possibly in response to my original bug report).

It doesn't have a user-interface in the Setup Configuration screen and so
cannot be set from there.

Instead you must edit your Pine settings file ($HOME/.pinerc for UNIX
Pine) and add this to the list of values of the "feature-list" variable.
(Simply adding "disable-busy-alarm" by itself any old place in the file
won't work.)

Cheers,

---

From: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 08:46:57 -0800 (PST)

On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Mike Brudenell wrote:

> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:20:27 +0000 (GMT)
> To: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>, Rick Byers <[email-masked]>

My case is slightly different, in which messages take a relatively long
tome to get posted, up to three to five minutes before I regain control.
I still have Pine3.91 on the system and when I run it messages get posted
without any delay.

> (Simply adding "disable-busy-alarm" by itself any old place in the file

I did just that after Rick Byers kindly explained it on this list, but it
did not make a difference in the performance of my Pine3.95 on HP system.
I also run Pine 3.95 on a Solaris box, having the same problem.  I run it
on a BSDI box without any problem.  Options and features are set the same
way across these three platforms, yet this problem only appears on HP and 
Solaris.

I read a message on this list dating January 27 describing the exact 
problem:

> To: [email-masked] 
> Subject: Mail sending issues under PINE 3.95 
> From: "Jeff D. Hinds" <[email-masked]> 
> Date: 27 Jan 1997 22:20:27 GMT 
> Sender: [email-masked] 
>
> When sending mail from a HPUX system, the pine program appears to hang up.
> This is most noticeable with large message being sent to a large
> distribution list. However, from time to time, this hang up occurs when
> sending a simple two paragraph message to a local user on the HPUX system.
> Has anyone encountered this behavior and is there a way to correct it?

I hope someone on the list solves this problem, otherwise I'll have to
revert back to Pine3.91.

Thanks for your help,

Joe

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:24:27 +0000 (GMT)

> I still have Pine3.91 on the system and when I run it messages get posted

Ah, this is a different case (different time (at posting), and it does
eventually return).

I _think_ the delay you are seeing is more to do with some additional
checking code introduced in Pine 3.95 (can anyone on the Pine Team confirm
this, and what it does?)

Have a look at Pine's Release Notes ("R" at the Main Menu, and search ("W"
command) for "background" (there are several instances).  This describes
the *EXPERIMENTAL* "Background Sending" feature new to Pine 3.94 onwards.

Note that you will probably have to recompile your Pine after uncommenting
the "BACKGROUND_POST" definitions in your pine/osdep/os-XXX.h header file
in order to make this feature available (if, indeed, it is supported on
your platform).

Worth a look...

Cheers,

---

From: "Joe R. Jah" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:14:26 -0800 (PST)

On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Mike Brudenell wrote:

> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:24:27 +0000 (GMT)
> Cc: Rick Byers <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Pine Hangs
> 

Yes it is, and I will look into it and send my results to the list.

Thank you very much,

Joe

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:01:10 -0800 (PST)

> checking code introduced in Pine 3.95 (can anyone on the Pine Team confirm

It's actually not Pine that is slowing things down... it's typically the
smtp server that is doing address validation "while you wait".  This all
depends on the configuration of the smtp server.  Some defer checking, and
the associated DNS lookups, some don't.  In a worst case scenario, the
smtp server will actually try to automount the home directories of local
recipients to look for .forward file entries... that can take *forever*.

(That Pine talks directly to smtp servers, rather than queuing the msg, is
new in recent versions, motivated by the need to support ESMTP options
such as 8BITMIME and --later on-- Delivery Service Notifications.) 

-teg

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:22:36 -0800

> checking code introduced in Pine 3.95 (can anyone on the Pine Team confirm

The problem stems from the different way Pine talks to Sendmail.  In
previous versions, Pine just handed the message off to sendmail and
let sendmail parse the message, etc.  Recent releases invoke sendmail
interactively to negotiate ESMTP options, addresses, etc.
Unfortunately, in interactive mode, Sendmail insists on doing a DNS
lookup for each address on the list.  Sendmail can be configured to
not do the DNS lookup, which is what we do here at UW. 

> the *EXPERIMENTAL* "Background Sending" feature new to Pine 3.94 onwards.

The release notes also discuss other techniques for improving the
sending performance.

-- 
David L. Miller <[email-masked]> | Men have become the tools of their
Software Engineer, Pine Development Team | tools. -- Henry David Thoreau
Box 354841, University of Washington     |
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA  |
Phone: (206)685-6240  FAX: (206)685-4045 |