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Date: 3 Jun 90 06:59:00 MDT
From: info-unix at BRL.MIL
Subject: INFO-UNIX Digest V10#050
To: "ckaul" <ckaul%math at cs.sandia.gov>
Return-Path: <incoming-info-unix-request at sandia.gov>
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From: The Moderator (Mike Muuss) <Info-Unix-Request at BRL.MIL>
To: INFO-UNIX at BRL.MIL
Reply-To: INFO-UNIX at BRL.MIL
Subject: INFO-UNIX Digest V10#050
Message-ID: <9006030546.aa23412 at SEM.BRL.MIL>
INFO-UNIX Digest Sun, 03 Jun 1990 V10#050
Today's Topics:
Sendmail help
nap(2) for AT&T UNIX V.3
Re: Copying /dev/* to another partition
how to make fifos keep data?
Re: Where should I go to find a terminfo/termcap description?
RFS Performance Info
Re: How secure is UNIX?
Re: SEX! or, how do I mail to a lot of unix users?
Re: looking for C language file differ
/dev/dsk/0p0 -> vp/ix (was Re: DOS Norton NCD under VP/ix causes panic)
_cleanup() before fork()? (was Re: How to terminate a child ...)
postprocessor for ditroff ? jetroff ?
Re: postprocessor for ditroff ? jetroff ?
Re: Why partition disks?
need help with 'curses'
Re: Why /etc/mtab? (was: Example modification of /etc/mtab wanted)
Can the output to a terminal be monitored?
Re: Can the output to a terminal be monitored?
Lunar calenders
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Macdonald <jmm at eci386.uucp>
Subject: Sendmail help
Date: 27 May 90 05:30:26 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
Is there a good reference anywhere for sendmail? (I checked,
O'Reilly does not have a Nutshell book that covers it.)
I'm trying to use it for the first time to set up a site with two
systems (a Sun 3 and a MIPS) connected by Ethernet&TCP/IP, where
one of them has a modem and uucp connection to an outside system.
I have set it up so that the machine with the modem uses TCP/IP
for known local machines (currently just the one), delivers local
stuff locally, and uses the outside system to resolve anything else.
If someone has a sendmail.cf that fits this situation, I'd be happy
to receive a copy.
(They don't have a domain name yet, but that is no problem for
the moment.)
I have the Sun sysadmin manual, and it has a fairly long section
on sendmail, but it is missing a lot of connection between the
description of low-level items in the sendmail.cf file and the
high-level description of the sorts of things you can do with
sendmail.
At the moment, my problem it that lots of large messages just
sit in the queue and are never passed on, in one case to lmail
(it came from a remote machine) and in the other cases to uux.
There are some descriptions of options that control penalty
factors for priority, but never a description of what priority
really means (in terms of how it affects *when* a piece of mail
will actually get processed - it does say that a higher priority
number means a heaavier penalty. (In actual operation it generally
seems to choosing between three choices - a fair number of small
messages are processed immediately, a small number of "intermediate"
sized messages are queued for a while and then processed, and a
large number of large messages get queued forever (a week so far)).
I have also tried using the debug command line option, trying to
run it against a specific queued element, hoping to get so idea
of why the items a staying on the queue, but that just seems to
debug the non-existent message that it assumes that I'm piping in
to it, and complains that there is no destination specified. The
reference in the manual that says "debug is very useful, if you
have source code you look around to find out what the codes and
levels actually mean" is rather discouraging to someone without
source code, but I just turned on everything and waded through
a huge amount of extraneous blather before I could figure that out.
(Source code would have allowed me to try and figure out the
queueing penalty algorithm too.)
I'm strongly tempted to dump sendmail and just use smail 2.5, but
if someone can convince me otherwise...
--
Algol 60 was an improvment on most | John Macdonald
of its successors - C.A.R. Hoare | jmm at eci386
-----------------------------
From: "Mark J. DeFilippis" <mark at promark.uucp>
Subject: nap(2) for AT&T UNIX V.3
Keywords: nap SCO AT&T
Date: 30 May 90 02:15:54 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
I remember seeing this before, but my memory does not serve me well.
I need to implement a nap(2) similar to that found in SCO UNIX
and SCO XENIX under AT&T Unix which allows me to sleep < 1 sec.
I have both SCO and AT&T UNIX for i386.
AT&T UNIX has no such animal. I was going to fake it by using
a streams device and use its timeout ability in the POLL(2)
but it is a kludgy hack I prefer not to put my name on.
Besides I think the stream would have to be a real physical
device and I don't have one I can just give up)
If anyone has done this before and can point me at a starting
place, or give me a short outline of what is required I would
really appreciate it.
Email would be best as I don't get to read news consistently these
days. Probably how i missed the solution (if there was one) in
the first place.
--
Mark J. DeFilippis
UUCP: uunet!adelphi!markd
-----------------------------
From: Larry McVoy <lm at snafu.sun.com>
Subject: Re: Copying /dev/* to another partition
Date: 31 May 90 01:45:47 GMT
Sender: news at sun.eng.sun.com
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <2538 at tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> k2 at charly.bl.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Klaus Steinberger) writes:
>rtidd at mwunix.mitre.org (Randall Tidd) writes:
>
>>I am running SunOS 4.1 on a Sun 3/160.
>
>>I am trying to clone my root partition to a backup partition (just
>>root and subdirectories, but *not* other partitions such as /usr,
>>/home, etc). I ran into a problem when trying to copy /dev; when I
>>try to cp /dev/sd0a (for example), it will try to read from the device
>>/dev/sd0a rather than copy the actual file /dev/sd0a.
>
>Use cpio or tar for this purpose. That's the way to do it.
And don't forget to install the boot block - just copying it doesn't
work. Check out installboot(8). Also - your backup /etc/fstab is going to
be different.
As a side note to sys admins: what this person is trying to do is *really* handy
if you are the sort that trashes partitions. I do file system development
and I can't survive w/o a backup root & usr.
---
Larry McVoy, Sun Microsystems (415) 336-7627 ...!sun!lm or lm at sun.com
-----------------------------
From: Mathias Koerber <koerberm at nixsin.uucp>
Subject: how to make fifos keep data?
Keywords: fifos pipes crash
Date: 31 May 90 08:39:57 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
Hello netlanders,
I have a somewhat urgent problem on my hands, so could you please help me?
I need to know if there is a possibilty to make named pipes (fifos) on
Unix SysV keep their data, even when the reading process dies or the machine
crashes. What I think of is someting like buffering on disk. I observed that
the writing process may as well,die, no data is lost. But even if there is
more data available, a crash of the reading process deleted all the data that
has already been written to the pipe. I have to use the pipes to transfer data
from a unix-device-handler into PROGRESS 4GL/RDBMS online so that the database
can be updated immediately. I cannot do anything on the reading side, but
the writing side might be able to set some parameters etc.
If anyone knows how to accomplish this, please let me know, I would be very
grateful.
My configuration: Nixdorf Targon /31 M15 TOS4.0.11
Thx, Mathias
--
Mathias Koerber |Tel: +65 / 7473828 ext 1852|Fax: +65 / 7474331
Nixdorf Computer Singapore|EUnet: koerber.sin at nixpbe |nerv: koerber.sin
2 Kallang Sector |uunet: uunet!linus!nixbur!koerber.sin
Singapore 1334 |[Standard-disclaimer:All views personal... ]
-----------------------------
From: Ray Shwake <shwake at raysnec.uucp>
Subject: Re: Where should I go to find a terminfo/termcap description?
Date: 1 Jun 90 14:14:02 GMT
Followup-To: comp.terminals
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <697 at hades.OZ> greyham at hades.OZ (Greyham Stoney) writes:
>Is there some central registry of terminfo/termcap descriptions anywhere?.
>I'm really after a Terminfo for an ICL6402; but I don't know where to start
>looking.
Assuming that ICL itself can't provide the info (which one might assume
it can), find out if the ICL6402 represents a simple renaming of some
other terminal. I know that ICL recently purchased Computer Consoles (CCI);
perhaps the terminal once had another moniker.
-----------------------------
From: tim at nttor.uucp
Subject: RFS Performance Info
Date: 1 Jun 90 15:19:11 GMT
Sender: "Tim Finnerty"@nttor.uucp
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
This is a posting from comp.unix. I hope to get more of
a response here. ------------->
We are working on what is essentially an embedded system
using VME hardware and Motorola's System V/68 (V.3). We are
considering using RFS to support interworking of 2 or
more such systems. I would like to get some feedback
on how well RFS performs. Specifically I would like to
know:
1) the relative performance of remote file access vs.
local file access using RFS
2) how well does it recover (e.g. if a machine using a
directory mounted from another machine goes down,
does it come back up and reaccess the directory
without intervention and vice versa.)
3) what happens if a client crashes while updating a
remote file
4) synchronization of mountable resources; can a
mountable resource be found if the server comes up
after the client, without manual intervention
5) what is the system overhead of using RFS
6) the relative performance of using remote named pipes
vs. local named pipes
7) the relative performance of using remote devices vs.
local devices
8) any misc. pitfalls; things that don't work as
advertised; surprises
For instance, re 1), I have been told that remote file
access using RFS is roughly 4 times slower than on a
local disk (using the same hardware - MVME147 CPU, SCSI
interface). If you can recommend any books or
periodical articles it would greatly appreciated as well.
Tim Finnerty {lsuc,utzoo,mnetor}!dciem!nttor!tim
Northern Telecom, Toronto, Canada. (416) 598-0196 x2417
-----------------------------
From: Richard Meesters <ram at attcan.uucp>
Subject: Re: How secure is UNIX?
Keywords: Security, ftp
Date: 1 Jun 90 15:19:32 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <1990Jun1.063800.17539 at athena.mit.edu>, jik at athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
> In article <11513 at vpk1.UUCP>, ram at attcan.UUCP (Richard Meesters) writes:
rm |> The point is, however valid. If you are going to use a .netrc, why
rm cant it be
rm |> more like the passwd system. This merely means that the ftp program must
rm |> provide the facilities for encryption/decription of the password,
rm rather than
rm |> leaving it up to the user to do so himself.
>
> First of all, the ftp protocol doesn't say, "Two machines talking to
> each other using the protocol must both be Unix machines that use a
> standard crypt() function for password verification." What it says is
> that there is a protocol command to send a password from the client to
> the server, and that server may use the password for verification in
> whatever way it chooses.
I'm not suggesting that we necessarily use the crypt() function call ala UNIX
to provide the data encryption. What I'm suggesting is that perhaps the ftp
code should include some form of encryption/decryption algorithm to protect
the password information. IMHO, any plain-text password stored on a system
is a security risk, no matter how well it is protected.
>
> Second, if the client is supposed to do password encryption, then
> what's to stop me from logging into your machine, grabbing your
> encrypted password string from the /etc/passwd file, then ftp'ing back
> to the same machine with a hacked ftp client which sends that encrypted
> string as the password? The ftp server says, "Gee, look, you've sent me
> the correct encrypted password!" and goes right ahead believing that I'm you.
Again, see above. It doesn't have to be the same encryption algorithm that
is used for /etc/passwd (or use the same key?). So the password in
/etc/passwd does not necessarily have any bearing on the passwd in .netrc.
The danger of a plain-text passwd in a file is that someone only has to SEE
it, rather than necessarily decrypt it to be able to use it.
>
> If I've misunderstood what you're suggesting, then please forgive me,
> and please explain more clearly what you're suggesting. If not, I think
> you've got to think through a bit more clearly exactly how ftp
> authentication, and Unix password authentication in general, works.
>
Like I said in my previous posting, I'm by no means an expert on the topic, but
rather just kicking around ideas. I appreciate your input.
Regards,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard A Meesters |
Technical Support Specialist | Insert std.logo here
AT&T Canada |
| "Waste is a terrible thing
ATTMAIL: ....attmail!rmeesters | to mind...clean up your act"
UUCP: ...att!attcan!ram |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
From: Brian Fenske <fenske at iftccu.ca.boeing.com>
Subject: Re: SEX! or, how do I mail to a lot of unix users?
Date: 1 Jun 90 16:51:07 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
I don't know if this command is available on all versions of UNIX but on our
Sequent you can use the "users" command to produce a string of usernames.
If joe, fred, bob and scooter are logged in, users produces
joe fred bob scooter
You could then just say
mail `users` < message
--
Brian Fenske Manufacturing Research & Development
Boeing Commercial Airplanes 747-400 Integrated Functional Test System
P.O. Box 3707, M/S 0P-37 (206) 342-5784
Seattle, WA 98124 ...uunet!bcstec!iftccu!fenske
-----------------------------
From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <murray at motto.uucp>
Subject: Re: SEX! or, how do I mail to a lot of unix users?
Date: 1 Jun 90 19:50:04 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
thermal%solgel.hepnet at CSA2.LBL.GOV.UUCP writes:
>I would like to be able to send a mail message to all the users on
>a unix machine...
If you're lucky enough to have a system where each user has a directory
someplace common (ie. /u/<username> for each user), then csh has a nice
way of doing it:
1) Create the document you want to send
2) % foreach i (/u/*)
? mail -s "Memo for you" $i < source-file
? echo sent to $i
? end
That oughta do it...
=============================== Murray S. Kucherawy ==========================
Motorola Canada, Ltd. Communications Division, Toronto [on work term]
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 2A Math (Comp Sci/Pure Math)
Internet: murray at motto.UUCP (work) mskucherawy at watmath.UWaterloo.ca (UW)
UUCP: uunet!utai!lsuc!motto!murray uunet!watmath!mskucherawy
-----------------------------
From: habafropzipulops <david at eng.sun.com>
Subject: Re: looking for C language file differ
Date: 1 Jun 90 17:57:35 GMT
Sender: david at sun.eng.sun.com
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <1990May31.185500.29790 at cbnewsd.att.com> jlash at cbnewsd.att.com
(john.k.lash) writes:
>Does anyoue have or know of a "syntax tolerant" diff program for C files?
Sure -- Dick Grune's "sim". It's in the comp.sources.unix archives, vol 3
and 4.
--
David DiGiacomo, Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, CA david at eng.sun.com
-----------------------------
From: Martin Weitzel <martin at mwtech.uucp>
Subject: /dev/dsk/0p0 -> vp/ix (was Re: DOS Norton NCD under VP/ix causes panic)
Keywords: ncd, norton, vpix
Date: 1 Jun 90 20:50:43 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <1990May31.165403.4270 at esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl at esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
>In article <505 at al.ele.tue.nl> raymond at ele.tue.nl (Raymond Nijssen) writes:
[about crashing unix thru disk accesses from vp/ix]
>However, there is another approach you might try. The way you are getting
>from vp/ix to the DOS disk is extremely convoluted: first Unix is simulating
>Unix files on top of the DOS file system, then vp/ix is using simulated remote
>networked DOS files on top of the simulated Unix files on the DOS file system.
>vp/ix, being DOS after all, can get to the DOS file system directly. Unmount
>the /dos partition and add to your vpix.cnf file a line like
>
>D /dev/dsk/0p0
Well, if I hear that some DOS *application* can crash my UNIX thru vp/ix,
I feel *very* reluctant to give access to my complete harddisk (and to
this does "/dev/dsk/0p0" refer) to vp/ix.
Related question: What about security issues? Again I feel very
reluctant to expose "/dev/dsk/0p0" to some untrusted program.
(Well I admit, I'm a little biased against DOS and vp/ix belongs
into this category, though I have it installed here.)
--
Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83
-----------------------------
From: Martin Weitzel <martin at mwtech.uucp>
Subject: _cleanup() before fork()? (was Re: How to terminate a child ...)
Date: 1 Jun 90 22:57:43 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <845:May2718:47:2590 at stealth.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
[dd ...]
>Using fflush() before a fork() is never wrong in practice; it's the only
>way to guarantee that the child can safely use stdio; and the possible
>efficiency hit is miniscule compared to the fork() time. While there may
>be a few exceptions, novices should learn fflush()-fork() rather than a
>fork()-_exit() that will ``mysteriously'' lose output.
One remark to that: Requiring (or teaching novices) to fflush() all
output streams before a fork() tends to clutter up the source
with unnecessary global variables or introduce many additional
parameters: If the program is halfway structured chances are big
that the respective FILE-pointers are not normally visible at the
point were the program fork()s.
It would be quite helpful if stdio had officially defined some
"fflush_all()" operation - which is necessary anyway, because its
implicitly called by exit(). For as much as I know the usual name
of this routine is "_cleanup()", but using it - of course - is not
recommendable for portable programs.
BTW: I would not be surprised if someone finds it a useful idea
to make fork() call _cleanup() implicitly some day, because he was
burned by accidentially duplicated output. Though I would not like to
see this, there have allready been worse things in this area, eg.
fiddling with PATH and UID's within execv(), which has broken some clean
and useful code in the attempt to provide a general fix for sloppily
designed programs.
--
Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83
-----------------------------
From: "Steinar O. Cook" <soc at dr.uucp>
Subject: postprocessor for ditroff ? jetroff ?
Keywords: ditroff
Date: 2 Jun 90 10:05:30 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
I'm running DWB on a 386 machine with Interactive UNIX. Does anyone know
of a postprocessor for ditroff which supports HP Laserjet ?
Please send answers to:
steinar at balder.uucp or ..!uunet!mcsun!nuug!dr!balder!steinar
-----------------------------
From: "Conor P. Cahill" <cpcahil at virtech.uucp>
Subject: Re: postprocessor for ditroff ? jetroff ?
Keywords: ditroff
Date: 2 Jun 90 21:23:22 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <648 at dr.uucp> soc at dr.uucp (Steinar O. Cook) writes:
>I'm running DWB on a 386 machine with Interactive UNIX. Does anyone know
>of a postprocessor for ditroff which supports HP Laserjet ?
The answer to this question (and zillions of others) is in the recently
posted i386 Frequently asked questions. If you can't find your copy,
send me email and I will forward a copy to you.
--
Conor P. Cahill (703)430-9247 Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil 46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
Sterling, VA 22170
-----------------------------
From: Ralph Finch <rfinch at caldwr.water.ca.gov>
Subject: Re: Why partition disks?
Keywords: partition, disk, SCSI
Date: 2 Jun 90 16:50:45 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <3419 at auspex.auspex.com> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>>1. Each file system can have at most 65,535 inodes, because the inode
>>number is stored in a 16 bit field in the directories.
>
>Speak for yourself. There exist versions of UNIX with more modern file
>systems that have 32-bit inumbers; the original poster didn't specify
>what flavor of UNIX they have, so they may or may not have a 64K inode
>limitation on their file systems.
It's SunOS which I assume uses the 32-bit inumbers. My thinking right
now is, one of the 1.2GB drives will be divided into 2 partitions, for
/home and /pub stuff; the other just 1 partition, for large files (we
run numerical models which tend to generate a few large files). Most
concerns expressed so far have been about administering the drives,
which is valid, but right now we just want some handy scratch space,
mainly.
--
Ralph Finch 916-445-0088
rfinch at water.ca.gov ...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch
Any opinions expressed are my own; they do not represent the DWR
-----------------------------
From: Qing Qi Tsao <tsao at helios.iec.ufl.edu>
Subject: need help with 'curses'
Date: 2 Jun 90 17:17:09 GMT
Sender: news at bikini.cis.ufl.edu
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
I am goinh to use cursor addressing and screen display library:curses,
and I do not have references except man pages, I will appreciate it very
much if somebody can send me some information about it, including references
or your experiences. I will post a summary when I have done.
-----------------------------
From: Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Why /etc/mtab? (was: Example modification of /etc/mtab wanted)
Date: 2 Jun 90 20:08:29 GMT
Sender: Barry Shein <bzs at world.std.com>
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
>Which leads me to pose the question:
>
> Why does Unix use a file to store mount information?
>
>It seems to me that the proper way to determine what's mounted would
>be to look in the kernel mount tables. It would be trivial to implement
>a system call to return the information. Anyone know why the "ask the
>kernel" approach was never taken?
It goes way back to the early Unix days, V6 on the PDP-11 certainly
had /etc/mtab. With a maximum of 64KB for the kernel you made
trade-offs, one of Unix's early plus's was how much it used facilities
outside the kernel to get things done. Design goals were also
compelling.
Of course, in this day and age it seems like a minor savings, but you
could probably find dozens of things like this to put in the kernel if
you looked around. The bloat would start to get real (why not store
environment variables in the kernel so children can set parent
processes? How about the password/group file? host tables? Heck,
everything YP manages? etc etc.)
There are a lot of us out there who hope the trend would be quite the
other way, more for design reasons than memory concerns. Things in the
kernel tend to quickly become immutable in various ways. Putting
things in the kernel tends to make innovation impossible unless you're
a kernel hacker (and have the sources, time and energy.) Just
changing, e.g., the way a few fields in a text file are handled is not
very hard if you wanted to extend mount table semantics.
What you really want is just a putmountent() library to hide the
details of the service, not to redesign Unix to make it easier to
write that one library call.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs at world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
-----------------------------
From: "Kevin D. Quitt" <kdq at demott.com>
Subject: Can the output to a terminal be monitored?
Date: 2 Jun 90 21:06:31 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
Is there a way that I (as root) can "tap into" a user to monitor
terminal activity? I specifcally would like to do this for the modem line.
--
_
Kevin D. Quitt Manager, Software Development 34 12 N 118 27 W
DeMott Electronics Co. 14707 Keswick St. Van Nuys, CA 91405-1266
VOICE (818) 988-4975 FAX (818) 997-1190
MODEM (818) 997-4496 Telebit PEP last demott!kdq kdq at demott.com
96.37% of the statistics used in arguments are made up.
-----------------------------
From: "Conor P. Cahill" <cpcahil at virtech.uucp>
Subject: Re: Can the output to a terminal be monitored?
Date: 3 Jun 90 01:11:11 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <270 at demott.COM> kdq at demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) writes:
> Is there a way that I (as root) can "tap into" a user to monitor
>terminal activity? I specifcally would like to do this for the modem line.
Not in software (unless you modify the software running on that port to
dump the data to a log file that you tail).
If what you want to do is to be able to abitrarily "tap" into a data line
you must do it with hardware. This can be done in several ways including
1. a data line analyzer that captures all the data
2. a poor-mans data capture which uses a second serial port on
your system and a special cable that wires TXD from the modem
port to RXD on the second serial port. You can then tail this
serial port whenever you want. Be sure that you do not have a
getty running on the port and that if the second port requires
DCD to be high you should loop DTR back to DCD.
--
Conor P. Cahill (703)430-9247 Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil 46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
Sterling, VA 22170
-----------------------------
From: Bill Irwin <bill at twg.uucp>
Subject: Re: Can the output to a terminal be monitored?
Date: 3 Jun 90 03:46:14 GMT
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To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
In article <270 at demott.COM> kdq at demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) writes:
>
> Is there a way that I (as root) can "tap into" a user to monitor
>terminal activity? I specifcally would like to do this for the modem line.
I have had some success using the "tee" process. In the user's .profile,
when it got to the place where the local menu system was going to be
brought up, I modified it to read:
menu | tee > .../.monitor
This basically pumps all screen I/O from that point on into the
".monitor" file. If you use append (">>"), each session will be appended
to the end of the file. The tricky part is that all escape sequences
sent to the terminal are captured in the file. If you do a "cat
.monitor", you will see a very fast version of the user's session (fast
because any time the user spent thinking or looking at the screen will
not be reflected in your viewing session), as though you were looking
over their shoulder. But you need to view with the same terminal type
that the user used, so that your terminal responds properly to the escape
sequences fed to it from .monitor.
In my experience, as soon as the user entered an application that put the
terminal into "raw" mode, output into .monitor was suspended until they
exited the application and became "cooked" again. This was frustrating.
Kind of like following a lady spy and watching her go into the ladies
room. You have to hang around outside waiting for her to out. How knows
what secrets she passed on while she was in there!
Also, I found that vi sessions didn't behave properly for the user being
monitored. You loose the advantage of secrecy if the user knows (or
suspects) they are being observed.
I would be very interested in reading some responses that would suggest a
solution to the vi and raw mode problems.
--
Bill Irwin - TWG The Westrheim Group - Vancouver, BC, Canada
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
uunet!van-bc!twg!bill (604) 431-9600 (voice) | UNIX Systems
Bill.Irwin at twg.bc.ca (604) 431-4629 (fax) | Integration
-----------------------------
From: Weil timothy <trw at aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Subject: 'ghost' entries in directory
Keywords: 'ghost entry', directory
Date: 2 Jun 90 22:59:51 GMT
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
This is probably a common UNIX question the answer to
which I've never seen -
A bundled file is sent to a user with instructions to
'sh <file...>' which in the process makes directories
and unpacks files...
However, the 'mkdir <somedir>' fails (dont know why) &
I'm left with unbundled files in my current directory...
Problem -> the 'mkdir <somedir>' command did create a
directory entry in '.' (current directory) BUT this
new directory cannot be entered (via cd <somedir>) or
recognized for deletion (rmdir <somedir> yields the
error, 'directory does not exist'.
What next? The <somedir> entry exists via 'ls -l'
& I've tried changing owner, access rights, etc.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions here...
-----------------------------
From: Muhammad Farrukh Khan <khan at cs.purdue.edu>
Subject: Lunar calenders
Date: 3 Jun 90 02:15:41 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
To: info-unix at sem.brl.mil
Is there any command on UNIX systems which will give both solar and
lunar calenders? I have once seen such a printout in the printer
room.
If not, is there a public domain program to give lunar dates?
Thanks!
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