ACUCNTRL man page on 4.4BSD

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ACUCNTRL(8)							   ACUCNTRL(8)

NAME
       acucntrl - turn around tty line between dialin and dialout

SYNOPSIS
       /usr/lib/uucp/acucntrl keyword ttyline

DESCRIPTION
       Acucntrl	 turns	around	the  terminal line, enabling it to be used for
       both dialin and dialout.	 On dialin a terminal line is assumed to  have
       modem  control  enabled	and  a	getty process in existence waiting for
       logins.	On dialout modem control is disabled and  there	 is  no	 getty
       process.

       This program must be run setuid to root.

       keyword	is  chosen  from  the list: disable or dialout, to condition a
       line for dialout; and enable or dialin, to condition a line for dialin.

       When the line is conditioned for dialing out, the  login	 name  of  the
       real  uid  of  the  process  is	placed in /etc/utmp in capitals.  This
       declares that the line is in use and  acts  as  an  additional  locking
       mechanism.   Acucntrl will refuse to act if the /etc/utmp entry for the
       line is not null, is not the the	 user's	 login	name  (capitalized  or
       not),  and  if  the  process is not running as the superuser.  The last
       condition is to allow the superuser to clear the state of the line.

       Turning modem control on or off is handled by  poking  into  /dev/kmem.
       It is currently implemented for dz, dh, and dmf lines.

       Under 4.2 BSD the program will also refuse to disable a line if carrier
       is sensed on it.	 This is to avoid the dead period  where  someone  has
       just dialed in and made the connection but has not yet logged in.

       Ttyline	can  be	 either	 of the form tty* or /dev/tty*.	 Enabling/dis‐
       abling a line whose name does not begin with ttyd? is prohibited unless
       the  real uid of the process is 0 or if the login name corresponding to
       the real uid is uucp.  This is a security precaution.

       Steps taken when disabling (i.e.	 setup for dialing out)

       1)     check input arguments

       2)     look in /etc/utmp to check that  the  line  is  not  in  use  by
	      another user

       3)     disable modem control on line

       4)     check for carrier on device

       5)     change owner of device to real uid

       6)     edit /etc/ttys,  changing the first character of the appropriate
	      line to 0

       7)     send a hangup to process 1 to poke init to disable getty

       8)     post uid name in capitals in /etc/utmp to let world know	device
	      has been grabbed

       9)     make sure that DTR is on

       Steps taken when enabling (i.e.	setup for dialing in)

       1)     check input arguments

       2)     look  in	/etc/utmp  to  check  that  the	 line is not in use by
	      another user

       3)     make sure modem control on line is disabled

       4)     turn off DTR to make sure line is hung up

       5)     condition line: clear exclusive use  and	set  hangup  on	 close
	      modes

       6)     turn on modem control

       7)     edit /etc/ttys,  changing the first character of the appropriate
	      line to 1

       8)     send a hangup to process 1 to poke init to enable getty

       9)     clear uid name for /etc/utmp

HISTORY
       First written by Allan Wilkes (fisher!allan)

       Modified June 8,1983 by	W.Sebok	 (astrovax!wls)	 to  poke  the	kernel
       rather  than  use  a  kernel hack to turn on/off modem control, using a
       subroutine  stolen  from	 a  program  written  by   Tsutomu   Shimomura
       {astrovax,escher}!tsutomu

       Worked over many times by W.Sebok (i.e.	hacked to death)

FILES
       /dev/kmem, /vmunix, /etc/ttys, /etc/utmp, /dev/tty*

BUGS
       Sensing	carrier	 requires  the	4.2 BSD TIOCMGET ioctl call.  Unfortu‐
       nately this ioctl is not implemented in the vanilla 4.2 BSD  dh	driver
       even though the dz and dmf drivers use an emulation of the DH11's modem
       control bits. This has been fixed here.

       Some time (currently 2 seconds) is  required  between  disabling	 modem
       control	and  opening  the  device.  This is probably because of a race
       with getty whose open is finally being allowed to complete.  This  time
       interval may not be enough on a loaded system.  Because of this problem
       and the above problem with the dh driver there is deliberately no error
       message given when the TIOCMGET ioctl fails.

       Previously  there  were	similar synchronization problems with the init
       process.	 When dialins are disabled the capitalized name of the process
       cannot  be  posted  into	 /etc/utmp  until  init	 has finished clearing
       /etc/utmp.  However one does not know how long that will take, and,  on
       a  loaded  system,   it can take quite a while.	This was solved by the
       strategy of 1) posting the name, 2) poking init, 3) going into  a  loop
       where  the  process  repeatedly	waits  a second and checks whether the
       entry has been cleared from /etc/utmp, and 4) posting the name again.

4.3 Berkeley Distribution	 June 1, 1994			   ACUCNTRL(8)
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