rjshaw@ramius.llnl.gov (08/15/90)
Hi.
Who knows the history behind "Can't suspend a login shell (yet)."
Is there a day when we will be able to do so, or is the "yet" a joke
that I don't understand? When I rlogin somewhere and <RET> ~ CNTL-Z <RET>
isn't that a suspension of the login shell on the remote machine? Isn't
suspension just sleeping?
No, I haven't read either of the internals books yet, but I'm planning
to get to the Berkeley one any day now [ half :-) half :-( ]
Thanx in advance for responses
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rjshaw@ramius.llnl.gov
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===============================================================================brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (08/19/90)
In article <498@llnl.LLNL.GOV> rjshaw@ramius.llnl.gov () writes: > Who knows the history behind "Can't suspend a login shell (yet)." When you suspend a shell, you're dumped back into the shell above it. The ``logical'' extension of this behavior to a network is what rlogin does when you type ~^Z at the beginning of a line. The connection is still there, but rlogin ignores it. The intuitive---and much more useful---extension of this behavior is what my pty program does upon a typed or accidental disconnect. The connection disappears entirely, but the tty session sticks around, blissfully unaware of anything going on. Later you can reconnect, from a different terminal, a different network, even piping input and output through other programs. You don't get screwed by a dying terminal or a fuzzy connection: just hang up, move to the next terminal, and reconnect. pty has only been widely available this summer; the shell is much older. Whoever stuck ``Can't suspend a login shell (yet)'' into the shell was dreaming of features only available in dreams, Steve Bellovin's proposed session manager, and VMS. Now those features are here, for BSD at least. ---Dan