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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!ukma!kherron
From: kherron@s.ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.dcom.lans,comp.unix.sysv386,news.software.rn
Subject: Starlan MS-DOS client doesn't like RN
Message-ID: <1991Feb14.174210.5636@ms.uky.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 91 17:42:10 GMT
Sender: kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Kentucky
Lines: 57

Sorry to post to so many groups; there's no one group devoted to starlan
and there's more than one approach to the problem.

I'm a technical consultant for some academic sites running Sysv/386 3.2, 
scattered over several states.  One of these sites has installed C news
and rn (patchlevel 47, I believe) from installation kits I've put 
together.  Most of the users of this machine use a DOS machine to connect,
via a starlan client.  The DOS starlan software apparently included a
version of kermit which can connect over the network, and a terminfo
description called "kermit" to go with it.

The problem:  Rn works fine from the 6386 console, but goes crazy when
run from a terminal session on one of the DOS systems.  From the
description, it appears that rn sends lots of nulls and possibly other
characters that the DOS end can't handle.  We've tried other terminfo
files, including simple ones like "tty" and "printer"; they all produce
different but no better behavior.  On a couple of tries, rn has acted
as though commands were typed when they weren't, so the DOS end may be
generating false keystrokes as well.  The behavior also changes when they
use -T or -v when starting rn.

They've never seen anything like this with any other software, including
vi.

I know that rn prints a lot of nulls (or some other "nothing" character) 
for some reason when it is between articles; I've seen it happen when 
running rn over a modem.  I suspect this is at least part of the problem.

The last part of the story is that this site is a few states away, and
all I have is e-mail, uucp, and voice telephone between here and there.
Nobody at the site would qualify as a unix wizard, so they won't be able
to solve this problem themselves.  And we don't have a starlan here,
so I don't have much access to starlan documentation.

So, 
1)  Has anyone seen a problem like this?  Better yet, has anyone
    solved it?
2)  Does anyone have a better terminfo for kermit over starlan, or
    can anyone recommend a better client?  Are there possibly some
    settings that can be changed within kermit to improve things?
3)  Is there another news reader available that doesn't try to be
    so cute with the terminal?  I'd like to avoid nn because of the
    database it requires.

If anyone can shed some light on this, I'll thank you, and my children
will thank you, and my children's children will thank you...Seriously,
the (small) CS department at this site is trying to get more students
interested in telecommunicating, but USENET is pretty much useless to
them at the moment.

Please reply to me rather than post; I'll summarize and post if 
anyone else is interested (yeah, right).
-- 
Kenneth Herron                                            kherron@ms.uky.edu
University of Kentucky                                        (606) 257-2975
Department of Mathematics 
                                "Never trust gimmicky gadgets" -- the Doctor