Resetting A Broken Server
About once a quarter, there's a panic because the network browser has
stopped sworking. Usually this is because one of the servers (the BSDISPATCH
server on Tarsus, or the IMGSRV server on Avalo) has become disabled. The
easy thing to try is to just reboot both of those machines: make sure no one
is using them for actual work, then log in as root and do /etc/reboot. Or if
they're really hosed and you can't log in, turn the power off and back on
again.
If you want to be professional and attempt to understand the problem,
you can diagnose whether the servers are functioning independent of the
browser installation by using telnet on a Unix machine:
DISPATCH server
---------------
unix% telnet tarsus.biostr.washington.edu 5010
find-service img
quit
IMAGE server
------------
unix% telnet avalo.biostr.washington.edu 5015
(get-file-info Index:Open.Thorax)
quit
Both of the above command sequences connect to the server in question and
do a typical command, which should reply with some cryptic numbers. If
it gives you errors or refuses to connect at all, that's a signal that
A) the server machine has become unavailable, either because of a crash or a
full process table or whatever, or B) it has become misconfigured, such that
even rebooting won't help. For instance, if the system software was updated
recently you might suspect that the inetd configuration has been mangled.
For more information on that kind of thing, see
Server software maintenance.