un-dedicating a line to a dialer

[Astrophysics]

My statement
>> If someone dials in and releases a long-running background job the
>> special file will be held open until the background job finishes (which
>> happens quite often on our system).  This will prevent locking mechanisms
>> like the above from working.  

Response:
> A sensible system will send a HUP signal to the process group when its
> leader dies, and unless the long-runner has been 'nohup'ed (and its
> references to the terminal closed), it will die.

But of course!  the long-runner has been nohup'ed (or the equivalent) by a
person who dialed in for the sole reason of starting the job and then hanging
up.  The real problem here in the 4.x BSD system we run here is that even
though a vhangup call removes all of the process's access permissions to
the port it does not reinitialize the port's state.

Bill Sebok	(dialing in here till I get astrovax back up again)
{allegra,decvax,ihnp4}!astrovax!wls