[comp.unix.questions] cu & sb/rb

erekose@apple.com (Erik Scheelke) (03/27/91)

I have a quick question:

I have a cu connection to another machine.  I want to use sb and rb (Y-Modem)
to send a file back and forth between machines.  How can I do this?

Thanks,
Erik

les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (03/27/91)

In article <50867@apple.Apple.COM> erekose@apple.com (Erik Scheelke) writes:

>I have a cu connection to another machine.  I want to use sb and rb (Y-Modem)
>to send a file back and forth between machines.  How can I do this?

Basically, you can't.  Cu forks into two processes, one of which reads
from the remote tty line and writes to your terminal.  When you do
a ~! or ~$ escape, the process reading from your terminal stops but
the other one continues to read from the remote line.  This means that
any other program that tries to read from the remote line is going to
lose data.  If you happen to have source for cu, there is supposed to
be an #ifdef'ed option to enable the ~+ command to stop the reading
process while running the specified process connected to the remote
line (exactly what you need for a file transfer protocol).  As far as
I know, this option is not enabled in any released versions of cu.

If you have kermit set up for dial-out on your machine you can do
shell escapes to run other programs without any interference.
However, you have to choose the outbound device for kermit and remember
it for explicit i/o redirection in the other command.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us

jpr@jpradley.jpr.com (Jean-Pierre Radley) (03/28/91)

In article <50867@apple.Apple.COM> erekose@apple.com (Erik Scheelke) writes:
>I have a quick question:
>I have a cu connection to another machine.  I want to use sb and rb (Y-Modem)
>to send a file back and forth between machines.  How can I do this?

Quick answer: you can, but it's very tricky to get cu to attach the stdin
and stdout to the modem port. A Bourne-shell script ("beta version") that
would appear to do this is in LIB 1 of CompuServe's unixForum, but I found
it needed a bit of work. It's called CU.SH.

I didn't undertake the work, because I felt it was doable but not worth my
time, since xcmalt lets me use rb, rz, rx, sz, sb, sx without trouble.
Xcmalt is in LIB 4 of the above mentioned Forum. It also enable capturing to
user-selected files, has a built-in xmodem protocol, does put and take, and
runs CompuServe' B+ protocol too. It can run interactively or under script
control.

If you don't have CompuServe access, write me back. I'll either send you
version 2.9 (issued last fall) or perhaps, RSN, the next version, which
I'm trying to release in the next few weeks.
-- 

 Jean-Pierre Radley   NYC Public Unix   jpr@jpradley.jpr.com   CIS: 72160,1341

rasmus@napc.uucp (Rasmus Lerdorf) (04/01/91)

In <1991Mar28.051117.4325@jpradley.jpr.com> jpr@jpradley.jpr.com (Jean-Pierre Radley) writes:

>In article <50867@apple.Apple.COM> erekose@apple.com (Erik Scheelke) writes:
>>I have a quick question:
>>I have a cu connection to another machine.  I want to use sb and rb (Y-Modem)
>>to send a file back and forth between machines.  How can I do this?

>I didn't undertake the work, because I felt it was doable but not worth my
>time, since xcmalt lets me use rb, rz, rx, sz, sb, sx without trouble.
>Xcmalt is in LIB 4 of the above mentioned Forum. It also enable capturing to
>user-selected files, has a built-in xmodem protocol, does put and take, and
>runs CompuServe' B+ protocol too. It can run interactively or under script
>control.

Pcomm which is a Unix ProComm clone is another program which lets you
run sb,rb, etc.  It has them all built in though.  X,Y,Z and a few 
others.  I tried xcmalt and found it flaky.  pcomm is flaky as well, but
with a bit of milk I liked the taste better.  
-- 
Rasmus Lerdorf    calgary!ajfcal!napc!rasmus       1020-64 Ave NE, Calgary
NovAtel Advanced Product Concept Development       Alberta, Canada T2E 7V8