UUCP Help

[Greg A. Woods]

In article <25668 at cup.portal.com> thad at cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
> I'm NOT satisfied with the kludge hot-wiring the DCD signal for HDB uucp.
> If I could afford the $$$ source license I'd fix the HDB problem myself.

Neither was I, but if you have the '\M' (Dialers) hacks (they actually
are not hacks, but reasonably good design, IMHO) in your uucp, then
you also have the ",M" (Devices) hacks.  More later....  You are
actually lucky to have a version of HDB UUCP with these features.
They seem to be a relatively recent invention.

As for docs,

> AT&T UNIX System V Release 3.2 System Administrator's Guide
> 	(c)1989, ISBN 0-13-944794-6

Mine is:
  AT&T Unix System V/386 Release 3.2 System Administrator's Guide
	(c)1989, ISBN 0-13-944893-4

And as Mr. McGee says, on pages 8-25,8-26 the "\M,\m" stuff is
documented, as is the ",M" on page 8-21.  I find it hard to believe
these are not in the generic 3.2 docs, though this is, unfortunately,
possible.

I also find it hard to believe the following comment was not in your
Dialers file (but again, this is, unfortunately, possible):

#  Furthermore, you must add a ",M" subfield to the line field (field
#  2) of the associated Devices file entries, as shown here:
#
#	ACU culd0,M - 1200 hayes \T
#
#  The ",M" subfield will cause the device to be opened with O_NDELAY set
#  (so the open doesn't hang waiting for carrier).  After the open,
#  O_NDELAY is cleared.  Then in the dialer script, "\M" sets CLOCAL and
#  "\m" clears it.   Typically, CLOCAL is set for the duration of the
#  dialer chat, then cleared (so uucico and cu will detect dropped lines)
#  once you're connected to the remote system.

As well, I find it hard to believe any AT&T person who knows about the
above features would continue to suggest and try to justify the stupid
idea of asserting DCD continuously on a port.  It seems those who
insist on ignoring the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{robohack,gate,tmsoft,ontmoh,utgpu,gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU,utorgpu.BITNET}
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