On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Ronny Svedman wrote:

> I find it strange that getty and kermit actually are allowed to compete
> for the same port. i thought that the first process to talk to the port
> would allocate it, and prevent any more processes from using that port?!? 

You are dreaming. Unix have nothing that prevents several people from
readin and writing to the same file. It's a free world... :-)
(Now, RSX is another matter... :-)

> atleast there must be some system for this e.g.  /var/spool/locks/LCK... 
> files. Does getty not honor these locks? Do i have to turn something
> special on to get this kind of managment functionality?

No, getty don't know, and don't care about /var/spool/lock, and
neither does cat, echo, csh or just about all other programs in Unix.
Thos who *do* care about /var/spool/lock are the exception, even though
those are the ones you usually use most of the time you want to talk out
on a serial port.

And it's still just a software issue, the operating system don't give you
any protection.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol