Conference bulova::decw_jan-89_to_nov-90

759.0. "DECwindows startup fails/Logical name problems" by EIDOS::D_RAIZEN (Dan Raizen) Wed May 10 1989 15:42

    I am having problems getting DECwindows to start up properly
    from SYSTARTUP_V5.COM.  I am running VMS V5.1 SDC on a VS2000.
    Originally, when I first set up my workstation, DECwindows
    started fine.  Then I added some layered product startups to
    SYSTARTUP_V5.COM (between starting DECnet and starting
    DECwindows) and I ran autogen (which mainly seemed to increase
    things).  Since then, DECwindows will not come up properly at
    system boot time.  I just get the pointer and nothing else.  The
    rest of VMS has booted and I can log in through the console.
    Now, if I log into to SYSTEM and issue the @DECW$STARTUP.COM
    interactively, DECwindows will start up just fine (after I log
    out from the SYSTEM account). 

    I first failed in DECW$STARTUP.COM in the place where it checks
    DECnet pipeline quota: 

$ DEFINE/USER sys$output sys$manager:decw$ncp1.tmp
$ NCP SHOW EXEC CHAR
$ SEARCH sys$manager:decw$ncp1.tmp "pipeline" /OUTPUT=sys$manager:decw$ncp2.tmp

    with the error message: file decw$ncp1.tmp not found.

    Then, I bypassed the DECnet checking by defining
    DECW$IGNORE_DECNET.  Now I get to the end of DECW$STARTAPPS.COM:

$ define/nolog decw$display 'decw$startup_dev'
$
$ RUN sys$system:decw$startlogin

    where I die with the error message: no logical name match.

    My diagnosis is that the logical name assignment is failing
    with no error message, and that the next command to come along
    expecting this logical name to be defined will fail.

    The local DECwindows experts here all thought I was crazy until
    someone else here had the identical problem under VMS 5.2.  All
    he claimed to have done was to run autogen and suddenly he would
    die in the places given above.  Before running autogen,
    DECwindows started fine.  He then ran autogen again, and he got
    DECwindows starting up again with no problems.  Now, I've tried
    re-running autogen, but with no success.  I looked over the
    other guys autogen report, but I can't see anything.  He insists
    that the fix must be that his last running of autogen increased
    RESHASHTBL from 128 to 256.  I looked up what this parameter is
    and I don't see how this would affect logical name assignments.

    I'm fairly ignorant about VMS quotas and parameters.  Any help
    with this problem would be greatly appreciated.

    First, do a:
    
    $ Search SYS$MANAGER:DECW$CHECK_PARAMS.COM "/GA"/OUTPUT=X.X
    
    Then edit the resulting file around a bit to provide a set of
    "MIN_parameter" entries suitable for DECwindows.  For example,
    the line that reads:
    
    $ parameter = "GBLSECTIONS/300/GA,GB,GC"
    
    needs to be changed to, at minimum:

    MIN_GBLSECTIONS=300

    Append the edited file to the bottom of AUTOGEN's site-specific
    file SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT, rerun AUTOGEN from GETDATA to
    REBOOT and see what happens.

NO! You shouldn't have to add things to MODPARAMS to get DECwindows to run.
All of the things that DECW$CHECK_PARAMS.COM checks are placed in VMSPARAMS.DAT
at install time.

The problem may be that there are TOO MANY things in MODPARAMS.DAT that are
overriding the settings of VMSPARAMS.DAT.  In this case, the solution is
to delete things from MODPARAMS.

And I agree, I doubt REHASHTBL would have much affect on anything related to
DECwindows.

    I finally had a chance to pursue this and I figured out what was
    going on.  Something in my SYSTARTUP_V5 had redefined the verb
    DEFINE to be DEFINE/EXEC/SYSTEM.  The defines in DECW$STARTUP
    didn't fail (see .0) since they put an entry in the system logical
    name table, but when those logical names were used they were
    fetched from the process name table (by default?) and so the
    translations were incorrect.  I was so hung up on the fact that
    I was running out of some obscure quota, that I overlooked this
    obvious problem.  Actually, it wasn't really obvious how DEFINE
    was being redefined, but that's another story.

    So this one goes under the heading of user error.  Perhaps the
    DECwindows developers could add a $DEFINE = "" to the
    beginning of their startup file, but it would be awfully low
    priority.