Summary: Printing problems; user ID suddely nobody
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Keywords: Printing, nobody, user ID, UID
Lines: 22
We have a problem in a ca.70 PC workstation network using PC-NFS 4.0a.
Sometimes, the printer jobs will hang (the servers spool directory
will contain the file but not append the .spl extension). Files written
atfter this on network disks will have the correct owner and group, but
when looking at the user information in the "network" part of the control
panel the user name will be "nobody", the domain will be nothing (not
"none" but plainly no entry, and UID and GID will be -1! (should be -2
or shouldn't it?). The error occurs intermittently, sometimes 4 times a day.
There is no known way to provoke it. Some PCs has never failed. When exiting to
DOS to check via "net name" the user information is correct. If the user
starts to log on to a server via telnet (or JSB i.e. a terminal emulator)
the user information will be back to normal and printing will again be
possible. (Old jobs will not be printed). This seems to be a problem on both 386SX and 486SX based systems, but happens much more often on the 486 systems.
This may be due to a higher level of user activity on these PCs. Both BICC
and WD (SMC) cards has been tested.
On tip received already: this could happen after trying to log on to a server
which is not available. Does not seem to apply to the situation at hand, though.
