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My Cross Updating Has Not Worked

The first thing we need to find out is at which stage of XUD has the problem occurred. The three main stages of Cross Updating are

  1. Queueing the log file and preparing for transfer
  2. The modems talking and transferring the files
  3. Checking in and integrating the arrived work,

Overview - with xshow

This is a stand alone utility that reports on :

  1. Work waiting to be integrated
  2. When integration last took place
  3. The status of the last communications attempt.
  4. If there are any unprocessed UUCP.123 files needing manual editing.

You can run it from the $ (or # or Vet>) prompts by typing xshow, to add it to a function key go:

From Old Style Menus; do Utilities; Function Keys
From New Style Menus; do System Management; Users/Macros/Messages; Function Keys

Select a free key, add as the command xshow and yes to clear screen.

This function key can now be used at most menus to check what is happening.

Check the Mail

Normally, if cross updating fails, the user 'root' on the machine it failed on will be mailed. It would appear that many of you are not actually checking the mail on the main system let alone the remote sites.

You can now add an option to the remote machines /etc/call_info file to re-route those errors to your mail box.

Either edit the file manually or use

  1. xmenu ->
  2. Option (a) Utilities ->
  3. Option (a) Edit /etc/call_info

and add the line: 

MAILTO="user@machine"

Now whenever, either x_send or x_check have problems they will be mailed to the machine and user specified.

uustatus

The easiest place to start looking for problems is in "xmenu" All the settings, times and status reports can be accessed from here.

Did the modems talk to each other ?

Check option No.6 in xmenu (uustatus) Does it say successful ?
Check option No.9 in xmenu (uulog) Are there any error messages.

If the modems do not appeared to have talked successfully:

  1. Switch modems at BOTH/ALL sites off and on again
  2. Check all cables, power supplies, phone socket connections
  3. Reboot the machine
  4. Check the phone lines are OK

You may need to do all these things or a combination of them.

Once you have tested everything, try and force a connection between sites.

If the modems have talked and the status says SUCCEEDED then you need to look at the log files to see what work is where.

The command uustat -a at a Vet> prompt will tell you if there is work queued to go to anther site, remmember, if there are queued file, they may be queued for Edinburgh as well as other sites.

Presumimg there is no work queued and the modems have talked, run the option No.2 from xmenu (x_check) This will look and see if any work has arrived and check it in.

You've got no files queued, you've run x_check.

Now logout and back in again - do you get any work / dots ?