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From: romain@pyrnj.UUCP (Romain Kang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid
Subject: Re:  Setting up a modem for dialin/dialout use
Message-ID: <8707160218.AA11281@pyrnj.uucp>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 22:18:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyrnj.8707160218.AA11281
Posted: Wed Jul 15 22:18:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 03:49:57 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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[I've tried sending this to info-pyramid several times.  Either
 it's getting swallowed in a black hole somewhere or Chris Torek
 is on vacation...]

Long ago, in another life, I hacked acucntrl to work with ITPs.  I
use it here on pyrnj since we have exactly one USR Courier and one
Telebit Trailblazer.  Here's the down-and-dirty:

The VAX BSD TIOCM*/TIOCMOD* ioctls aren't actually implemented even
though they appear in ucb ioctl.h (well, no one's ever asked for them,
and besides, a lot of the VAX drivers didn't support them in 4.2) so
you wind up using the ITP*CARRIER calls anyway.  I don't know why
they didn't work for Duncan; they work fine here.

The problem with acucntrl is that it can be nondeterministic or
otherwise prone to error.  To illustrate, suppose a truck runs into the
power main and you crash while a line is disabled.  When you come back
up, acucntrl won't realize that the line is already disabled (yes, a
quick hack could fix this), so uucico's or tip's that attempt to use
that line will hang forever until the sys admin (hey, that's me)
notices and takes appropriate action.  Not cool on a 64-plus-user
system.

I never got around to make acucntrl fix both ucb and att utmp files.
It won't work at all if you run att init/getty/login.  (Of course, all
you need then is uugetty.)  In any case, acucntrl is not solid enough
for Pyramid as a corporation to support.  The proper solution seems to
be implementing something like the 4.3 modem driver or Ultrix
TIOCSINUSE/TIOCNCAR/...  However, the demand for such a kernel hook
simply isn't there.

Anyone who wants acucntrl badly enough can drop me a line, as long as
he knows he's on his own once he runs it.  Note that somewhere in old
net.sources archives, there is a program that uses similar stuff to
implement functionality similar to System V ct (courtesy of
vu-vlsi!elh).  And if you're really eager to get yourself in trouble,
uucico on OSx 3.1 and later already knows about acucntrl (it's the 4.3
uucp).
--
Romain Kang	{allegra,cmcl2,pyramid,rutgers}!pyrnj!romain

''!!!x89 dimaryP a fo edisni deppart m'I  !pleH``
``oNhwre eenraa  sab dsab iegnt arppdei  n aAV X117/05!!''