🚀 go-pugleaf

I did a really stupid thing at the end of Friday.  I've been running a
RH 5.0 system (plus security patches) for some time and I finally decided
to upgrade it to RH 5.2.  Won't take more than a couple of hours I
thought  -  wrong.

Part way through the upgrade the /usr partition filled up - something the
Red Hat installation/upgrade process doesn't handle well (indeed, doesn't
handle at all).  I was left with a bootable but non-functional system.
After a lot of hard thinking I drew up a plan to back up all the
configuration data to /home, then re-install 5.2 from scratch re-formatting
/,/usr and /var.  For the most part I got it right and only had to retrieve
a couple of things from tape, but I'm left with two outstanding major
problems.

I use ISDN to connect to Demon, and previously I was running a patched
2.0.32 kernel and using isdn4k-utils version 2.0.  The 2.0.36 kernel
with RH5.2 already has the ISDN stuff in it, but it doesn't come with
the utilities.  The documentation with the kernel source says that the
correct version of the utilities is 2.0, but they won't compile with
that version of the kernel.  (IIOCGETSET and IIOCSETSET have been marked
as obsolete and removed.  The 2.0 utilities use these ioctl codes.)

I found a pre-compiled version of the utilities, in RPM form for RH 5.2
and identified as isdn4k-utils-9803020842-1.  These do work with the 2.0.36
kernel but the ipppd included in that package won't talk to Demon.  It
connects and then gives an error message -

    Unsupported protocol: Internet Protocol Control Protocol (0x8021)

and hangs up again.  (Actually, I think it's the Demon end which hangs
up.)  I've managed to get a Heath-Robinson connection going by using the
pre-compiled utilities (not something I like doing but I couldn't get
in touch else) and the old (compiled for 2.0.32) copy of ipppd.
The oddity I have remaining is that ipppd won't dial or hang up without
an explicit instruction - "isdnctrl dial ipp0".  Auto-dial just doesn't
happen and despite the hang-up timeout being set to 120 seconds the link
doesn't hang up automatically from my end.  Demon's end eventually hangs
it up if I don't do a manual disconnect.

Can anyone point me to a proper version of isdn4k-utils which is compatible
with the ISDN stuff in 2.0.36 please?  Also some pointers on why auto-dial
has stopped working would be helpful.

My other big problem is with Majordomo (1.94.4).  It was running before,
but now despite re-instating the aliases, any messages sent to it generate
the error message "unknown mailer error 9".  The majordomo test scripts
report that the installation is fine (IME they always do this regardless
of how many configuration errors there are), and turning debugging on
produces no useful information.

(The majordomo installation is on /usr/local which was not touched by the
re-installation of the OS.  I've reinstated the majordomo user and group
and set up the aliases again.)

Thanks in advance for any help

John
-- 
John Winters.  Wallingford, Oxon, England.

The Linux Emporium - a source for Linux CDs in the UK
See <http://www.polo.demon.co.uk/emporium.html>