Forum OpenACS Q&A: Can someone explain these errors please?

Hi
I'm using mod_nsd on apache, and I'm getting these errors in the
error_log.  I'm not sure if they will happen on aolserver, but either
way, if anyone knows what they mean, then hopefully from your
explanation I can start troubleshooting.  otherwise, I'm stuck:

1)
[Fri Aug  3 10:53:31 2001] [notice] (25)Inappropriate ioctl for
device: Loading
bootstrap
support: /usr/local/apache/./libexec/aol_bootstrap/Init_hooks.tcl

(many more like that...but just wondering about what the TYPE of
error means...like what an ioctl is)

2)
Sourcing /home/httpd/parameters/ad.tcl
[Fri Aug  3 10:53:32 2001] [error] tcl module blew up --- backtrace
follows:
can't read "server": no such variable
    while executing
"ns_section ns/server/${server}/acs"
    (file "/home/httpd/parameters/ad.tcl" line 14)
    invoked from within
"source /home/httpd/parameters/ad.tcl"

("blew up" CAN'T be a good thing.)

thanks
Dave

The ad.tcl file which is used to parameterize your installation is referencing the Tcl variable "server", which you need to set up in your nsd.tcl file.  It is set up this way so you only need to add that one line, rather than edit a bazillion hard-coded references in the ad.tcl script.

This is structured into two scripts largely for historical reasons.  nsd.tcl traditionally is used to set up server parameters, database pools, etc and an example comes with the AOLserver download.  This is a generic set-up file that isn't strongly tied to the ACS.

In contrast, ad.tcl is full of ACS-specific parameters.

There actually is some installation documentation that covers this stuff...

ioctl() is Unix kernel's Swiss Army Knife, i.e., one kernel call to do many different things. Terrible design, btw. More info: http://nim.cit.cornell.edu/usr/share/man/info/en_US/a_doc_lib/libs/basetrf1/ioctl32.htm and http://www.tac.eu.org/cgi-bin/man-cgi?ioctl+2.

As far as "module blew up" I would guess that it's just a poetic sentence chosen by mod_nsd author to inform that it couldn't load the module. I wouldn't attribute too much meaning to the wording.

I recommend using pure AOLServer, unless you really need Apache for some reason. It's easy to install as Apache+mod_nsd and more stable.