[plug] Re: minicom and modem config

[Matt Kemner]

On Tue, 16 Feb 1999, Tamara Thompson wrote:

> do "man ln".  if your modem is set to be COM1, you want to do 
> "ln -s /dev/cua0 /dev/modem" to make /dev/modem point to the right
> place. if the modem is set to COM2, then s/cua0/cua1/.  logging in as
> root and running modemtool will also let you set /dev/modem up.  all
> it is is a frontend to the "ln -s" command i gave above.

I'd just like to make 2 points here.

Point one is that as of linux 2.2.0 (2.1.X if you want to get real picky)
use of /dev/cuaX is discouraged, so y'all should be using /dev/ttySx
instead.

Point two is that if you're going to use symlinks such as
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem
you should make sure that _everything_ on your system that uses the modem,
uses /dev/modem.  This is because when a program uses the modem, it
(should) check for lockfile such as /var/lock/LCK..ttyS0, and if this file
does not exist, creates one, and then uses the modem.  If you start mixing
/dev/modem and /dev/ttyS0, one program may create the lockfile LCK..modem
and the next program may check for LCK..ttyS0, which won't exist, so it
will start writing stuff to the comport.

 - Matt