blank screen

[Kenneth Brody]

On 3/31/2016 2:16 PM, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 01:16:43PM -0400, Kenneth Brody via Filepro-list thus spoke:
>>
>> Can you try restarting the license manager?
>
> That innocuously little thing that -never- causes any operational problems
> to the degree people would avoid upgrading to a version which contains it?
> That's the bit you want restarted?
>
> Why would you even bring it up, since it's such a non-issue?
[...]

Because it's a quick and easy first step in tracking down the cause.  In the 
(likely) event that that doesn't help, then there would be more to start 
looking in to.  It's the same reason that troubleshooting guides almost 
always start with "is it plugged in?"  (How often is that *really* the cause?)

Is it possible that the license manager may have some issue that's locking 
up filePro?  I've never said otherwise.  However, how many times have you 
seen someone ask why their filePro appears to hang on startup?

It's also possible that a shared library used by filePro binaries has been 
corrupted somehow.  Or a corrupted termcap file.  Or something corrupted the 
filePro binaries themselves.  Or that something has "locked" the filepro 
directory.  (Yes, I've seen on more than one occasion a Unix box where some 
file was "stuck" in some kernel-level I/O, and any attempt to access it 
would hang the process so hard that "kill -9" didn't kill it.)  Or maybe 
it's just the onset of dementia.  :-)  Or any of a zillion other possibilities.

I suppose you suggest that people stick with MS-DOS, because a very common 
first question to problems with programs crashing on Windows is "have you 
tried rebooting?"

Even my Android phone suggests after a week of uptime that I reboot it.  I 
guess I'll stick with my old flip-phone instead?  Heck, maybe those old AT&T 
rotary phones, which lasted so long that they're still around.  Those never 
had issues.

-- 
Kenneth Brody