[daip] Re: AIPS 1: SYMBOL?

[Eric Greisen]

Piner Glenn writes:
 > 
 > Hello,
 > 
 > I have a student AIPS user who simply gets the message AIPS 1: SYMBOL? whenever he enters any input.  So, for example:
 > >AIPS 1: Recovered POPS environment from last exit
 > >ucat
 > >AIPS 1: SYMBOL?       UCAT
 > >exit
 > >AIPS 1: SYMBOL?       EXIT
 > >
 > This error started happening today, without an obvious cause.
 > The problem is only affecting his particular user ID, other user IDs are fine.
 > I can't try the normal fixes like 'restore 0' because his AIPS doesn't understand any input:
 > >restore 0
 > AIPS 1: SYMBOL?       RESTORE
 > 
 > Could you let me know the cause and solution to this problem, if this is a well-known problem?

In some way the symbol table stored in the SAVE/GET area called
LASTEXIT was damaged when the student exited the last time things
worked - a CTRL-C in the middle of the EXIT could do this although
machine/network troubles are the usual cause.  Go to the first data
area and delete SGDuuu001.uuu\; where uuu is the user number in
extended hexadecimal.  You can get that lots of ways (EHEX UUU where
UUU is the user number in decimal).  Then start aips up again.

Eric Greisen