From: MERC::"uunet!WKUVX1.BITNET!goathunter" 22-APR-1993 15:38:49.95 To: supser-l@WKUVX1.BITNET CC: Subj: Supervisor Series v5.4b released Hi. My, things have been quiet here. I assume either nobody's having problems or you've all given up on using the Supervisor Series. 8-) Well, there was one site that has had problems with PHOTO crashing the system since sometime before Thanksgiving. After months of attempting to find the problem, I believe I finally did. A new version of the Supervisor Series, version 5.4b, is now available that corrects the problem. Symptoms: Non-privileged user running PHOTO manages to crash the system. Checking PHOTO data/code regions reveals that they've been hosed by some unknown piece of software. Cause: The protection on some P1 memory created and used by PHOTO was left as UW (user write), meaning that user-mode code could overwrite those pages. This could happen if a user-mode program mismanaged the user stack by popping too many elements. Normally, attempting to push something at that point would cause an access violation, but since PHOTO left the pages as UW, the push worked, overwriting the data. The next time PHOTO tried to access the now-invalid data, the system would crash. Solution: PHOTO now correctly sets the page protection so that it is not writable from user-mode. This was a real stumper until one of my users with a buggy MACRO-32 program caused two system crashes in a row just by running her program. Previously, the crashes appeared to happen at random and was not easily reproduced. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO GET THE NEW SUPERVISOR SERIES You can get the new Supervisor Series via anonymous ftp from ftp.spc.edu and via e-mail from FILESERV@WKUVX1.BITNET. You have two choices: install the whole Supervisor Series kit again or install an upgrade that will take you from V5.4 or v5.4a to v5.4b. The documentation has not changed, so there's no need to reinstall that if you choose the former. On ftp.spc.edu, you'll need: [.MACRO32]UNZIP.EXE [.MACRO32.SAVESETS]SUPERVISOR.ZIP !The whole kit [.MACRO32.SAVESETS]SUPSER_REVB_UPGRADE054.ZIP !The *upgrade* kit To get them via e-mail, send the appropriate commands below in the body of a mail message to FILESERV@WKUVX1.BITNET: SEND SUPERVISOR !The whole kit (33 60-block files) SEND SUPSER_REVB_UPGRADE054 !The upgrade kit (9 60-block files) SEND FILESERV_TOOLS !Needed if you don't have UNZIP & MFTU --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hunter ------ Hunter Goatley, VMS Systems Programmer, Western Kentucky University goathunter@WKUVX1.BITNET (or goathunter%wkuvx1.bitnet@UKCC.UKY.EDU)