Bug in time spec in HDB /usr/lib/uucp/Systems file

Jonathan Clark jhc at mtune.ATT.COM
Wed Nov 29 14:12:23 AEST 1989


In article <614 at uncle.UUCP> jbm at uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) writes:
>Surprise! If you put "Never" or "Nvr" or "DON'T" in the second field of the
>/usr/lib/uucp/Systems file (HDB only), it will consider it the SAME AS "Any".

Not quite true, although this is a bug in the version of HDB which is not
supposed to be publically available for the unix pc. ``Never'' is *not* a
reserved word in this version, and what ends up happening is that the
code scans off the end of the time field looking for something it can understand
and eventually finds the ``Any'' in the speed field, and uses that. Needless
to say this is not quite what was intended, and it took some headscratching
before I worked out what was going on. As far as I recall ``Never'' is not a
reserved word until SVR4 (could be SVR3.2.1, but I don't think so).

>Sooo, if you wanted this:
>system Never ACU Any - don't call this system, let them call us
>use this:
>system ; ACU Any - don't call this system, let them call us

Actually just:

	System Never

will work for this purpose. We use:

	system Su0152-0153 blah blah blah

for a 'cu'-only entry, when we don't want to use split Systems files,
and the effect is the same.
-- 
Jonathan Clark
jhc at mtune.att.com, attmail!jonathan

The Englishman never enjoys himself except for some noble purpose.



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