greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid) (08/16/89)
I have a NeXT cube running UUCP. Everything works okay, but the two computers with which I have connections seem to have a very high failure rate logging in. It isn't broken, because the connection is always made eventually, but it seems to hang an awful lot. To be more precise, their system calls mine, the modem answers and the connection is established, but there is basically no response from the "getty" process on my system, the receive and transmit lights on the modem do nothing, and after about 30 seconds the calling system hangs up with a FAILED (LOGIN) message in the log file. Similarly, trying to log in through tip(1) from the remote machine often is greeted with null behavior. I am now attributing this to a weird modem. I bought a brand new (and brand X) Avatex 2400 baud Hayes-compatible modem. I haven't had any problems with it when I dial out, but maybe its auto-answer behavior is not up to spec, especially when the calling modem has to go through some baud rate negotiations or something. Has anyone had any similar experiences, or have any suggestions? Should I spend three times what I paid for this modem and get a real Hayes modem? Should I spend ten times it and get a Trailblazer :-? Is the problem my modem or "getty" on the NeXT? Thanks for any insights, Glenn Reid Adobe Systems
eht@f.word.cs.cmu.edu (Eric Thayer) (08/16/89)
After spending some time working on uucp here, you might want to make sure your modem is connected to the Serial A port if you are going to be doing both dial in and dial out. The reason being is that Serial A is the only one which supports carrier detection. Also, along these lines, you will want a cable that takes carrier detect from your modem to pin 7 of the Serial A connector. (Thus, a Mac cable won't do if you want modem control. For just dial out, a Mac cable would work fine on Serial B). Aside from these things, we've found that it was possible for getty to think that the serial port was in use, when in reality nobody was using the port. I called up NeXT support on this one and they told me that this was a known bug under 0.9. One grotesque way of getting around this one was to craft a script which attempted to see if anyone had dialed out/in and if not, kill and restart the getty associated with the serial port. This cleared out the pending open that getty had and allowed the serial port to function properly for a while. Aside from these things, using the -x9 arg and being able to look at some uucp sources helped me out tremendously. The sources were very useful in tracking down modem config problems because I then could figure out what the dialer was doing. Hope this helps some harried individuals out there. -- Eric H. Thayer School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon (412) 268-7679 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) (08/16/89)
greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid) writes: >attributing this to a weird modem. I bought a brand new >(and brand X) Avatex 2400 baud Hayes-compatible modem. I >haven't had any problems with it when I dial out, but maybe >its auto-answer behavior is not up to spec, especially when Unless you are getting a Trailblazer stick with the Avatex. The Avatex is a good modem. We have them installed at all our customer sites, and do not have any trouble with them. JB -- Jonathan Bayer Beware: The light at the end of the Intelligent Software Products, Inc. tunnel may be an oncoming dragon 500 Oakwood Ave. ...uunet!ispi!root Roselle Park, NJ 07204 (201) 245-5922 jbayer@ispi.UUCP