Putri-Dos on the Net


Q.   
     A few nights ago I logged onto PutriNet and tried to send a file 
to a friend.  The first half transmitted OK, but the second half came 
out garbled.  The strange thing is that when my friend tried to access 
the same file later on, the first half was garbled and the second half 
was OK.  Sometimes when he looks at it it's one way, sometimes the 
other.  How come?

A.   
     When PutriNet was being set up there were some compromises made 
for reasons more political than technical.  One of these was that data 
would be transmitted and stored in ASCII on odd-numbered days and in 
EBCDIC on even-numbered days, with appropriate conversions transparent 
to the user.  You probably had transmission in progress at midnight so 
that the first half of the file was sent in ASCII and the second half 
in EBCDIC or vice versa.  On such a file the time-of-transmission 
entry in the directory often gets garbled, with the effect that when 
the file is read the ASCII-to-EBCDIC (or vice versa) translation is 
sometimes applied to the entire file and sometimes not at all, 
garbling whichever half of the file is in the "wrong" code.  To fix 
it, you will have to keep calling up the file and saving copies of it 
until you get one with the first half OK and another with the second 
half OK, then delete the garbled portions and concatenate what's left.
  
     In the future you should take care not to have transmissions in 
progress at midnight.  Also, watch out for time zone problems.  If 
it's before midnight in your time zone and after midnight in the 
destination zone (or any zone the message may be routed through) or 
vice versa you could also have problems.


Q.
     Recently I tried to change some settings in my Putri-Net account 
and got a message that only the system administrator could make the 
changes.  How do I get them made?   

A.
     At the system prompt type "FAQ root" and hit Enter.  This will 
bring up a FAQ file giving the system's root password and instructions 
for logging in as root, a list of things it's dangerous to mess with, 
and so on.  

     Some chronic nay-sayers claim this is a potential security hole.  
They, however, have probably never had a serious problem come up when 
the support office was closed.  Also, malicious attacks via this route 
are much less frequent than normal failures that users are able to 
handle.  Thus having the root password available is preferable to 
making users wait several days for staff members to come in and fix 
things they usually know less about than most users.  


                         Tom Digby
                         bubbles@well.sf.ca.us 
                         for Putri-DOS Users' Group