[16773] in Athena Bugs
Re: netscape problems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alex T Prengel)
Wed Mar 31 12:05:25 1999
To: "Noah P. Snyder" <noahp@MIT.EDU>
Cc: alexp@MIT.EDU, othomas@MIT.EDU, bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 31 Mar 1999 11:36:44 EST."
<37024F1C.C6375EE@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 12:05:34 EST
From: Alex T Prengel <alexp@MIT.EDU>
Hi Noah,
>1. I use Netscape Communicator 4.05 on a private SGI 02 Athena workstation
>in building 54. I like Netscape. I use it for web browsing and email. I
>have a large address book within Netscape mail. When I open the address
>book I always receive the following error on the console window:
>
>11:33 ALERT: netscape [23672] - out of logical swap space during brk/sbrk -
>see swap(1M)
I don't maintain Netscape so perhaps someone on bug-infoagents can add
to this- but I believe this is because you are running out of
memory. If you have been viewing a sequence of images, Netscape grabs
(and doesn't release) memory, leading to this problem. Try exiting
Netscape and restarting. Also, quit any other large applications you
may be running at the same time. I don't think much more can be done
about this if doing what I suggest doesn't help.
>2. Is there any chance of getting licenses for (a) SoftWindows, so we can
>look at Microsoft Word and Excel files on the workstations and (b) an
>updated version of RealPlayer.
Unfortunately SoftWindows doesn't work well on Athena- I did a test
installation a while back and we decided that we couldn't support it
as an Athena application. The reasons are long and involved- but among
other things, it needs to do things on the local machine snd modifies
local devices (floppy, CD-ROM etc.) in ways that adversely affect operation
of other applications- it also leaves the machine in a non-standard state
that is bad for serial reusability.
If you have access to a private workstation, you may be able to
install a local SoftWindows copy- however you would have to do this on
your own, it would be unsupported and if it breaks the machine, about
all the Athena operations people could do to fix it is a complete
reinstall, which erases everything on the machine.
I'm sorry this is so discouraging but unfortunately Athenizing machines
requires giving up some things that work on "plain vanilla" machines.
As far as looking at Word and Excel files, both FrameMaker and Applixware
on Athena can read and write these formats for some Word/Excel versions,
though probably not the latest releases. I hope this helps some.
Alex
