derez peculiarity

[Richard Todd]

sysmark at physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt) writes:

>Why on earth can't I use derez if I'm not invoking it from a window on
>the console?  If I rlogin onto an A/UX system from my workstation, and

Because, to a large extent, it's really a MacOS application disguised as
a Unix program, and thus needs to be able to talk to the MacOS emulation
environment.  

>First of all, what is /dev/uinter0?  It's not documented in section 7 of
>the System Administrator's Reference manual.  At the moment, it's owned
>by the person who is currently logged in on the console; protection mode
>is 0600.

It's one of the mysterious undocumented devices used by the MacOS-under-Unix
environment.  It's mode 600 owned by the guy logged into the console 
because he's (presumably) on there running a Mac program...  

>Secondly, why does derez even care about /dev/uinter0?  Is there a good
>reason (and, if so, what?), or is it just a bug?

I gather that rez and derez were basically quick ports of the MPW tools of
the same name, and thus are basically "MacOS" programs.  I wouldn't call it
a bug, but it's definitely a questionable design decision.  And they definitely
should have put in the man pages in large red letters "WARNING: REQUIRES
ACTIVE MacOS ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO RUN."

>Finally, what other A/UX commands have this (mis)feature?

None offhand that I recall, except for ones like "launch" and "CommandShell"
which don't make any sense to invoke unless you are on the console.  
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd at uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd at chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd at servalan.uucp
"Elvis has left Bettendorf!"