Borland C++ 4.5

[Andrew Neil Ramage]

When I tried to install BC++ 4.5, the installation proceeded normally. 
However, when I clicked "Finish", it trashed my X server, causing the 
system to stop responding to key presses and the mouse.  I could not 
even kill the X server, and so had to pull the power cord out.  Is this 
a known problem, and will I still be able to use my Development identity ?

[Troy Rollo]

On Tue, 31 May 2005 06:12, Andrew Neil Ramage wrote:
> When I tried to install BC++ 4.5, the installation proceeded normally.
> However, when I clicked "Finish", it trashed my X server, causing the
> system to stop responding to key presses and the mouse.  I could not
> even kill the X server, and so had to pull the power cord out.  Is this
> a known problem, and will I still be able to use my Development identity ?

There probably aren't many people still using BC++4.5, but those that do don't 
particularly care about this problem. If you copy over your bc45 directory 
from a native Windows installation it should just work(tm).

[Uwe Bonnes]

> > > > > "Andrew" == Andrew Neil Ramage  writes:

Andrew> When I tried to install BC++ 4.5, the installation proceeded
    Andrew> normally.  However, when I clicked "Finish", it trashed my X
    Andrew> server, causing the system to stop responding to key presses and
    Andrew> the mouse.  I could not even kill the X server, and so had to
    Andrew> pull the power cord out.  Is this a known problem, and will I
    Andrew> still be able to use my Development identity ?

A hard hang is an ugly error.

But you give few information:
- what system
- what wine from what source
- where to download the BC++ 4.5 installation package
- was remote access still possible when X hang
etc,etc
which could help debugging the information

[Andrew Neil Ramage]

This was a BC++ 4.5 CD I bought years ago.  The system I use is SusE 9.2 
Desktop (hoping to upgrade to Pro soon) and the latest wine cvs.  There 
was no debugging information available as the system hung, so I could 
not access the shell window I started the install from.

Andrew

You can be the captain
I will draw the chart
Sailing into destiny
Closer to the heart

Closer to the Heart by Rush (A Farewell to Kings, 1977)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> > > > > > "Andrew" == Andrew Neil Ramage  writes:
> Andrew> When I tried to install BC++ 4.5, the installation proceeded
> Andrew> normally.  However, when I clicked "Finish", it trashed my X
> Andrew> server, causing the system to stop responding to key presses and
> Andrew> the mouse.  I could not even kill the X server, and so had to
> Andrew> pull the power cord out.  Is this a known problem, and will I
> Andrew> still be able to use my Development identity ?
>
> A hard hang is an ugly error.
>
> But you give few information:
> - what system
> - what wine from what source
> - where to download the BC++ 4.5 installation package
> - was remote access still possible when X hang
>
> etc,etc
> which could help debugging the information

[Kuba Ober]

On Tuesday 31 May 2005 11:29, Andrew Neil Ramage wrote:
> This was a BC++ 4.5 CD I bought years ago.  The system I use is SusE 9.2
> Desktop (hoping to upgrade to Pro soon) and the latest wine cvs.  There
> was no debugging information available as the system hung, so I could
> not access the shell window I started the install from.

Did you try ssh'ing into the system and executing 'killall X' as root? The 
mere fact that X doesn't react to keystrokes doesn't necessarily mean that 
the system is hanging.

Cheers, Kuba

I had a similar situation installing Dragon Nat. Speaking with  
installshield. I thought the thing was hanging and infact it was popping  
up a modal dlg with a yes/no or whatever and wine was failing to bring it  
to the front.

If the BC installer is hogging the whole screen and you are getting a  
similar disfunction in wine you may think it is hung when it is not.

There is a line in .wine/config that allows you to catch badly behaved  
installers in 600x800 window so that you can still access the rest of the  
system.

It's fairly unlikely that an installer will really cripple your kernel to  
the point where you have to power-off.

HTH

On Tue, 31 May 2005 21:53:19 +0200, Kuba Ober  wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 May 2005 11:29, Andrew Neil Ramage wrote:
> > This was a BC++ 4.5 CD I bought years ago.  The system I use is SusE 9.2
> > Desktop (hoping to upgrade to Pro soon) and the latest wine cvs.  There
> > was no debugging information available as the system hung, so I could
> > not access the shell window I started the install from.
>
> Did you try ssh'ing into the system and executing 'killall X' as root?  
> The
> mere fact that X doesn't react to keystrokes doesn't necessarily mean  
> that
> the system is hanging.
>
> Cheers, Kuba

[Andreas Mohr]

Hi,

On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 10:31:33PM +0200, [e-mail] wrote:
> It's fairly unlikely that an installer will really cripple your kernel to  
> the point where you have to power-off.

Well, it's fairly likely if you have a program allocating the whole world
and even a bit more than that (e.g. by stack trashing which causes a pointer value
to be used as the size to allocate: ugh) with a user that forgot to set
a memory limit... (ulimit -v?).
Then just have the Linux OOM mechanism fail to kill the misbehaving program properly,
and that's it.

(this perhaps happened here)

Andreas Mohr

[Andrew Neil Ramage]

The screen was corrupted - the install was a small window in the corner 
(ie, it took over the shell window), but when it tried to create a 
desktop icon (I think) the whole screen became a patchwork of colours.

Andrew

You can be the captain
I will draw the chart
Sailing into destiny
Closer to the heart

Closer to the Heart by Rush (A Farewell to Kings, 1977)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[e-mail] wrote:
> I had a similar situation installing Dragon Nat. Speaking with  
> installshield. I thought the thing was hanging and infact it was 
> popping  up a modal dlg with a yes/no or whatever and wine was failing 
> to bring it  to the front.
>
> If the BC installer is hogging the whole screen and you are getting a  
> similar disfunction in wine you may think it is hung when it is not.
>
> There is a line in .wine/config that allows you to catch badly behaved  
> installers in 600x800 window so that you can still access the rest of 
> the  system.
>
> It's fairly unlikely that an installer will really cripple your kernel 
> to  the point where you have to power-off.
>
> HTH
>
> On Tue, 31 May 2005 21:53:19 +0200, Kuba Ober  wrote:
> > On Tuesday 31 May 2005 11:29, Andrew Neil Ramage wrote:
> > > This was a BC++ 4.5 CD I bought years ago.  The system I use is SusE 9.2
> > > Desktop (hoping to upgrade to Pro soon) and the latest wine cvs.  There
> > > was no debugging information available as the system hung, so I could
> > > not access the shell window I started the install from.
> >
> > Did you try ssh'ing into the system and executing 'killall X' as 
> > root?  The
> > mere fact that X doesn't react to keystrokes doesn't necessarily mean  
> > that
> > the system is hanging.
> >
> > Cheers, Kuba

[Mike Hearn]

On Tue, 31 May 2005 15:53:19 -0400, Kuba Ober wrote:
> Did you try ssh'ing into the system and executing 'killall X' as root? The 
> mere fact that X doesn't react to keystrokes doesn't necessarily mean that 
> the system is hanging.

If the system no longer responds to keystrokes then it *has* hung and we
should treat fixing as it a a+ priority, regardless of what is going on
under the hood. There's no difference for users between "X is hung" and
"Linux is hung" ...

[Uwe Bonnes]

> > > > > "Mike" == Mike Hearn  writes:

Mike> On Tue, 31 May 2005 15:53:19 -0400, Kuba Ober wrote:
    >> Did you try ssh'ing into the system and executing 'killall X' as
    >> root? The mere fact that X doesn't react to keystrokes doesn't
    >> necessarily mean that the system is hanging.

Mike> If the system no longer responds to keystrokes then it *has* hung
    Mike> and we should treat fixing as it a a+ priority, regardless of what
    Mike> is going on under the hood. There's no difference for users
    Mike> between "X is hung" and "Linux is hung" ...

There are some ways that wine can make Linux unusable, like:
- A modal box hogging the Display in the foreground
- Some error triggering the rebuilding of the Font database . As X is single
threaded, this will hog X
...

We need more input...