Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!crash!jeh
From: jeh@crash.cts.com (Jamie Hanrahan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Problem with Lundy T5680 and SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE
Message-ID: <2367@crash.cts.com>
Date: 13 Jan 88 21:30:56 GMT
References: <8801130556.AA09826@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: jeh@crash.CTS.COM (Jamie Hanrahan)
Organization: CMKRNL Press, San Diego, CA
Lines: 41
Summary: Make SYLOGIN.COM smarter

In article <8801130556.AA09826@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> IMHW400@INDYVAX.BITNET writes:
>One of our users has a Lundy T5680 graphic terminal.  He complains that
>when he logs in the terminal locks up and must be powered off to be revived.
>We suspect that SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE is causing the problem.  Ordinarily
>one would sigh and tell the user to take that command out of his LOGIN.COM.
>Trouble is, at our site the command is in SYLOGIN.COM and is expected by
>several hundred users.  Does anybody out in netland know another solution
>than removing the SET from SYLOGIN and making everybody put it in LOGIN?

Sigh... this is one reason why we put such things in something called
SYS_UTIL:USERLOGIN.COM, which most user's LOGIN.COMs invoke.  But if a 
user doesn't like something in USERLOGIN they're free to grab a private
copy and edit it to taste.  

If you can't do something like that, here are some things to consider:

1.  If the terminal is hardwired to a particular mux port, have SYLOGIN
look at the terminal device name (f$getjpi with the TERMINAL itemcode
will do it, so will f$trnlnm on SYS$OUTPUT)
before doing the SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE .
Note that if the terminal is on a LAT port you can write a little program
using $QIOs that will return the LAT port id, and you could make this
info available to the rest of SYLOGIN by having the program do a LIB$SET_
SYMBOL or some such.  

2.  If the terminal is hardwired to a particular user :-), have SYLOGIN
look at f$getjpi(USERNAME) before doing the set term/inquire.  Naturally
the user  might log in at other terminals, in which case s/he'll have to do a
SET TERM/INQUIRE "manually" if s/he wants to, but that's better than 
EVERYONE having to do it manually.  

3.  If the Lundy has its own "who am I" sequence, you could run a 
program that would emit the Lundy's "who am I", wait a second or two for
an answer, and set a DCL symbol via LIB$SET_SYMBOL to tell the rest of
SYLOGIN whether to do a standard SET TERM/INQUIRE.  Of course, this 
assumes that the Lundy's "who am I" won't mess up other terminals... :-)

Naturally your SYLOGIN shouldn't do any of this stuff unless f$mode()
shows that it's being run interactively.  

I'll bet there are some other workarounds.  Anyone else have any ideas?