From: SMTP%"terry@SPCVXB.SPC.EDU" 24-MAY-1993 16:26:35.88 To: EVERHART CC: Subj: VMS V5.5-2 SMGSHR breaks News in some cases (ACCVIOs) Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 03:00:04 EDT Reply-To: "Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr." Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion From: "Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr." Organization: St. Peter's College, US Subject: VMS V5.5-2 SMGSHR breaks News in some cases (ACCVIOs) To: Multiple recipients of list ANU-NEWS Here's one I haven't seen discussed before: The SMGSHR.EXE supplied with VMS V5.5-2 (internal ID V05-003 8-Jul-1992) breaks News (at least 6.1B4 and newer) under some cases: 1) If you are viewing an item which is "massively cross-posted" (such that the list of groups is wider than the screen), when you do the FOLLOWUP, instead of getting the "Post - no authorized newsgroups", you get an ACCVIO (in SHARE$SMGSHR+76638) called from line 12313* in NEWSDISPLAY, which is smg$end_pasteboard_update(&pid). However, if you try this from the directory (instead of viewing the item) you correctly get the "no authorized" message (but see below). 2) If you try to followup to a massively cross-posted article from the directory, you get the "no authorized" message, but the next attempt to view any item results in an SMG-F-INVDIS_ID (fom SHARE$SMGSHR+32699) and an immediate exit from news. Of course, neither of these update the NEWSRC. file, which is most annoy- ing. I installed a copy of SMGSHR from a VMS V5.4-3 system (internal ID V05-003 [Nice of Engineering to not update the version number] 19-Jun-90 and both problems went away. *Note: These line numbers may vary. This is from VMS V5.5-2, VAX C V3.2-044, etc. However, since C counts #include's for lines, any changes to the include file(s) in use will change this. See the source snippet below for the exact section of the program. I reported this to the CSC, and they assigned it the sequence number C930523-217. If anyone wants to work with the CSC to pin this down, here is a copy of my service call: -------- From: TERRY "Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr" 23-MAY-1993 21:52:43.67 To: NERMAL::DSN%VMS-FILESYS-PROG CC: TERRY Subj: (PR2) SMGSHR distributed with VMS V5.5-2 causes ACCVIO in application The SMGSHR distributed with VMS V5.5-2 ACCVIO's in a call to SMG$END_PAST- BOARD_UPDATE under some conditions. I have seen two particular cases where this happens, one of which causes an ACCVIO at SHARE$SMGSHR+76638, and another which returns SMG-F-INVDIS_ID preceding SHARE$SMGSHR+32699 and which later causes a random ACCVIO on another call. These problems were observed with SMGSHR.EXE V05-003, 8-Jul-1992. When I installed the SMGSHR.EXE which was supplied with VMS V5.4-3, SMGSHR V05-003 (it would be nice if Engineering updated the version number), 19-Jun-1990, both problems went away. It appears that in fixing some other SMG problems (see V5.5-2 release notes) other SMG problems were introduced. Even if invalid parameters are passed to the SMG routines, this should not result in an ACCVIO for the current SMG function or any future call in that process. This is a PR2 problem instead of a PR3 because we have other applications which need the SMG fixes provided in the VMS V5.5-2 image. The application which demonstrates this problem is quite large (871 blocks) and I have been unable to abstract a code fragment which demonstrates the problem. I do have full sources for the application and have a version linked with DEBUG, and I can give you access to my system to aid in pinpointing the problem. Here is the sequence of statements leading up to the accvio for the first case described above: smg$put_chars(&trailer_vd,c$dsc(mprompt),c$ac(2),c$ac(1),c$ac(1),c$ac(SMG$M_R EVERSE),0,0); smg$erase_line(&trailer_vd,c$ac(1),c$ac(6)); smg$set_cursor_abs(&trailer_vd,c$ac(1),c$ac(1)); smg$end_pasteboard_update(&pid); However, it is more complicated than that as this code executes properly most of the time. -------- Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381