jr@amanue.UUCP (10/03/87)
A while back I posted a couple of articles about problems getting getty to
respond to BREAK on tty000. As I recall, the last news I mentioned was
that the hotline had verified that the driver was indeed eating a null,
which is what getty uses to tell it to switch baud rates. (A BREAK should
come through as a null with a framing error at any baud rate.) My respondent
at the hotline said he'd passed it along to the group that actually fixes bugs.
The other day I was actually *sent* a floppy by AT&T containing a new kernel
that does indeed seem to fix it! Three cheers for AT&T and for the hotline!!
I'm impressed. I was pleased that whoever made up the floppy just made it a
good ole fashioned cpio archive -- I didn't even have to mess with ua to
install it. The new kernel is shown as UNIX3.51.1. When it boots, though,
where the old kernel said something about 3.51, the new one simply says 000a.
One curious thing about this kernel is that it's nearly 200 bytes *smaller*
than the old one. That looks like more than a tiny change to the driver!
Now for everyone else out in UNIX-PC-land I'm not sure what the right procedure
is for you to get this fix. I've only had my machine a couple of months or
so -- I gather there are things called FIXDISKs that are official AT&T fixes.
I just read an article by someone claiming that AT&T had told them there was
*no* FIXDISK for 3.51. It's possible that whoever authored this fix just
hasn't had time for it to percolate through the normal channel whereby a
FIXDISK is created, and sent it to me "hot off the press". I'm assuming in
due course there will be a way for everyone else to get this. It was an AT&T
unit in Chicago, & they called me to tell me they would have a fix; good
thing because he'd built a 3.5 kernel. So that means you should in theory
be able to get the fix even if you're not at 3.51.
Maybe someone from AT&T on this group can clarify how everyone will be able
to get this fix.
--
Jim Rosenberg
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