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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm!ndsuvm1!ndsuvax!ncoverby
From: ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Autodialer from Hell
Summary: SCO XENIX has a nice solution
Message-ID: <2047@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 89 05:11:56 GMT
References: <3221@vice.ICO.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby)
Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp
Organization: Silo Tech, Fargo
Lines: 43


In article <3221@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> keithl@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Keith Lofstrom) writes:
>Yes, I have an Autodialer from Hell.

Must be a uucp demon :-)

>Due to a single digit error in my L.sys file, my modem has been harrassing
>some poor fellow for months.   I'm not the first to make this mistake, though
>perhaps the first to admit it over the net.

Jerry Pournelle wrote about doing this several years ago (back when I read
BYTE).

>But how to improve the dialer?  Most of us don't have uucp sources, and
>many have odd machines. [ ... ]

>I suppose what is needed is a public domain version of uucico, so it can
>be distributed and hacked on.

I recently helped a friend bring up uucp on his SCO XENIX system.  They had
a rather elegant solution to the dialer jungle: uucico calls another program
to dial the phone.  They do give out the source to this dialer program, but
since it's an external program with a rather simple set of command line
parameters, wouldn't be much to reverse-engineer anyway.  So you put all of
your nice error trapping in there and thus call your dialer back from hell.
I can't recall if there were any "standard" ways of writing to the uucp
LOGFILE, but they did pass the debug (-x) level along.

GNU UUCP does exist in a rather primitive form.  I got a copy from a friend
who "found" it when he moved systems (no, I won't send a copy out to
anybody).  The copy I have hasn't evolved much beyond the "uuslave" program
posted a year or so ago.  The latest "interim" release of uupc does work
quite well, but I think the code in GNUUCP is much cleaner.

Ideally the way to FIX the dialer problem once and for all is to create a
script language which has rules for operation, and allow the smarts to do
all the nice things you want your uucp to do, such as being persistant about
a busy line, calm about another system not answering, or go away if a human
voice is detected (by the modem, of course).  It would also be nice if the
entire file transfer protocol could have the smarts to hang up and try again
if the error rate was rather high (like on a noisy phone line; even dialing
back right away can get you a better line).  How can all of this be done you
ask?  One answer is an expert system.

Glen Overby     ncoverby@plains.nodak.edu
uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby                  ncoverby@ndsuvax (Bitnet)