Modems

[John Abreau]

On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, James Dow wrote:

> This may seem a bit basic, but I was wondering if anyone could send me some
> info on how to make/allow a modem to answer on RH6.

The login prompt comes from a getty process; /etc/inittab defines the
details of what devices to attach getty processes to, and with what
options. The options are defined in /etc/gettydefs.

You'll need to add a line to /etc/inittab for the serial port that the
modem is on. It's possible you'll need to add a custom definition to
/etc/gettytab as well. You'll also have to configure the modem.

Note that I haven't actually done this since 1994 or 1995; the process may
be a lot simpler today than it was the last time I had to set up a UUCP
mail server. The most important detail I recall is that you *DON'T* want
to set up the modem to auto-answer; I was never able to get this to work.

Instead, you want a chat script to make getty watch for the text string
"RING" from the modem and then send the modem a command to answer.
There were several variants of getty when I did this; I think the one I
used was called "mgetty" or "uugetty", and it had this chat-script
capability. I don't think the other getty variants did.

--
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
Email: jabr at blu.org / URL: http://www.blu.org
ICQ#28611923 / AIM abreauj
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