uugetty on Altos not behaving properly?

[Gene H. Olson]

Chances are your problems stem from one of the two problems below:

1)	The ALTOS cu does not create a lockfile.  It has been that
	way for at least 5 years, and although the problem has often
	been reported, ALTOS does not seem to think it is an important
	problem to solve.

2)	Modem control doesn't work.   Uugetty requires that cu can open
	the tty port with NDELAY, change the mode to CLOCAL, then turn
	off NDELAY and proceed to dial out and communicate.   This screws
	up really bad on the ALTOS, and differently depending on the
	revision of the operating system, and the type of serial port
	you are using.

As you might guess, I am quite bitter about the above.  I have
suffered with kludges to avoid both of these for years.  My
advice is to:

1)	Replace cu (if you can) with a shell script that sets the
	lockfile,  and

2)	Force CD on the modem so the ALTOS never sees CD drop which
	is what upsets it.

This is really cludgy,  however experience says it *will* work
*most* of the time.


Gene H. Olson
Smartware Consulting
Minneapolis, MN
gene at zeno.mn.org