🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all,

I have a problem with user ID 100 on my NeXTSTEP 3.0 system: Everytime I create
a user with that ID, it goes wild. The user can login at a tty, but as soon
as he decides to use NeXTSTEP, the system crashes after logging in. The
symptoms vary: Sometimes you can get into the WorkSpace, but none of the
defaults - not even the time zone - applies. Setting them doesn't help
too long. Most of the times the system just hangs up. The only thing that
shows up is a spinning disc-mouse. Not even 'halt' in the NMI does anything 
besides removing the NMI window. Only way is 'monitor' or any of the even 
worse ways... Other user IDs (101, 102..., 20, 21, ...) are working as 
expected.

My upgrading to NeXTSTEP 3.0 went the following way: Move anything to the
internal 400 MByte disc, then install from scratch on the external 500 MByte
disc. Run two systems (2.1 and 3.0) as long as you need to check what's
missing in 3.0 (Writenow & Co.) and to check what of your 'must haves' does
not run (everything was ok), then remove 2.1 and make the external drive
the default boot device (scsi 0). From my 2.1 time there are the user IDs 
in the twenties, but after installing 3.0 I had a user ID of 100 for 'me'
(or was it my own user? don't remember). I deleted this '100' and worked
with my own user with ID 20 or so. Then a few other users had to be
created, and - whoommm! - user ID 100 doesn't work! There is no other
user with ID 100 in my NetInfo database, there are no defaults regarding
a default user, there is nothing unusual in my system.

WAIT: It is not only user ID 100! Another re-created user (ID 22) caused
the same 'don't want to go into Workspace' symptom that leaves the NMI without
any reaction on a halt command. I changed the user ID of that user to 102
(was unused then) and chown'ed all of his files to the new ID. And: Not
much better. This time it gave a system panic, I think it was a Bus Error,
but I cannot remember. After this experience I tried to add another user
(newly created, id 106) and tried to log on with that one. No success and
a new symptom: system panic! This time I wrote down the message log:

unexpected kernel page fault failure
trap: type 0x410 fcode 6 rw 1 faultaddr 0x20000
trap: pc 0x20000 sp 0x3ffd78 sr 0x2018
trap: cpu 0 th 0x101378e4 proc 0x0 pid 0 pcb 0x10fd200c
traceback: fp 0x10fd2fe0
called from pc 04084336 fp 10fd2ffc 4-args 040b1784 00000000 00000000 10137bc4
called from pc 040a27e0 fp 00000000 4-args 040a27e0 00000000 00002304 80000000
last fp 0x0
panic: (CPU 0) MMU invalid descriptor during table walk

after that there were the usual rebooting messages. (If this is a neccessary
information: I - until now - only have 8 MBytes of RAM in my monostation,
my ROM monitor version is 2.5 v66.)

After trying that user again, it worked - almost: The only thing that's
missing is the default language of the user. I selected 'German' (or 'Deutsch')
in the user manager. When I finally manage to log on, I have everything in
English. After that, when I enter the user manager again, this user has
gone to English. Seeing that the symptoms are not always present, I even
tried (a third or fourth time) to create a user with ID 100 - this time
with success, but without the proper language. As it seems to go, I have
to try out the ability to use NextSTEP everytime I create a new user. That's
not nice. BTW: My /usr/template/user directory is unmodified from the 3.0 CD.
At the moment, all the users I know the passwords from are able to run. There
are two users who have already changed their passwords from the tty and who
have not yet logged on on the real screen, so there might be two left...

If you have any suggestions or further questions, please email (no NeXTmail
yet) me since I might just skip my own subject (shouldn't, I know...).

Thanks,

Uli

P.S.: I send this to bugs@next.com and to comp.sys.next.sysadm to get as many
ideas as possible.