Re: gnumach & plex86

[edrx@inx.com.br (Eduardo Ochs)]

> > It's a good thing that I finally got a second box. Right now I'm trying
> > to set it up so I could comunicate with it through the serial port.
> > BTW, does anyone have suggestions for serial line communication programs
> > other then minicom and `cat >/dev/ttyS1' and `cat /dev/ttyS1' in two
> > different xterms?
>
> I have always used the vanilla `cu' and `tip' programs (I don't think
> current Linux systems have `tip', but `cu' is part of GNU/Taylor UUCP).

Expect is perfect for that -- it is even easy to implement all sorts
of macro tricks using it.  An example (this is slightly off-topic, I
know):

expect -c '
  spawn -noecho -open [open /dev/ttyS2 r+]
  stty speed 115200 < /dev/ttyS2
  stty -icanon
  interact {
    ~ return
    timeout 5 return
  }
'

is an Expect script that I use to interact directly with my modem; a
variation of it adds

    "\033r" {send ATX3L0\r}
    "\033d" {send ATDT//15002000\r}

to the clauses of the "interact" command, and then if I type esc-r or
esc-d Expect translates that to some long strings.

Expect has at least two big drawbacks, though:

  1) The main source of documentation for it is a non-free book called
     "Exploring Expect", published by O'Reilly; it is excellent, but
     it is almost impossible to learn Expect using only the free docs.

  2) It hasn't been ported to the Hurd yet AFAIK, so the box that will
     be debugging the other one will have to be running another free
     OS.

Cheers,
  Eduardo Ochs
  http://angg.twu.net/
  edrx@inx.com.br