derez peculiarity

[Kent Sandvik, 120dB or more]

In article <1991May3.143648.24192 at helios.physics.utoronto.ca> mark at cita.toronto.edu writes:
>Why on earth can't I use derez if I'm not invoking it from a window on
>the console?  If I rlogin onto an A/UX system from my workstation, and
>try to run derez, I get the following error message:
>
>	Can't open user interface device
>	/dev/uinter0: Permission denied
>

Hi, this is a new *feature* of A/UX 2.0, rez/derez needs access to the
Macintosh toolbox emulation world, and this is done using the /dev/uinter0
which is active under the Finder login session. In other words, hybrid
apps such as rez/derez needs Finder running.

>First of all, what is /dev/uinter0?  It's not documented in section 7 of
>the System Administrator's Reference manual.  At the moment, it's owned
>by the person who is currently logged in on the console; protection mode
>is 0600.

/dev/uinter0 is the main device driver interface that handles communication
between an A/UX Toolbox application (or tool, like rez/derez) and the kernel.

Note, this is only needed for so called hybrid apps. And rez/derez as
the CommandShell are examples of hybrid Mac/UNIX apps.

For more documentation about /dev/uinter0, see section C-2,3 in "A/UX
Toolbox:Macintosh ROM Interface" manual. But basically the driver does
a lot of grunt stuff, like memory mapping, event-queue handling, cursor
tracking, A-line trap dispatching and so on.


Regards,
Kent Sandvik
-proud father of a 14 hour old boy

-- 
Kent Sandvik, DTS Rock Lobster
Disclaimer: I am not working with Public Relations.