Pty basics, please

[John.Ackermann@Dayton.NCR.COM]

I need some info on the basics of the pseudo-terminal program.  I have a
piece of software (ham radio implementation of tcp/ip) that, in conjunction
with pty, will supposedly let me have multiple users accessing a single tty
port (via radio) and give each a unix login.  I also have the pty software
package (this is going on a SVR2 machine).

What I don't have is a basic understanding of what pty does and how it works.
For example (in basic terms), how does it keep input from multiple users on a
single port straight?  And, in the real world (apart from this somewhat-strange
ham implementation) what is it used for?  Finally, how is it normally configured
on a machine -- I see references to banks of pty's associated with physical
tty's, but it wasn't very clear how this works.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
John R. Ackermann, Jr.						 (513) 445-2966
Law Department, NCR Corporation			     	     VoicePlus 622-2966
Dayton, Ohio					  John.Ackermann at Dayton.NCR.COM
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