NAME

fget.demon, fget.odemon − file retrieval daemons

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lib/fget.demon time
/usr/lib/fget.odemon time

DESCRIPTION

Fget.demon and fget.odemon are the retrieval daemons for the 200-series DATA-PHONE® set and for the Murray Hill Spider network.  They are designed to retrieve files that have been requested by fget(1C) from the MH HONEYWELL 6000 computer.  The argument time is the number of seconds for fget.demon to wait for files to appear from GRTS.  The default is 6 minutes.  Fget.demon is automatically initiated by fget(1C), and by cron(1M).

On systems with both Spider and DATA-PHONE connections to the HONEYWELL 6000 computer, fget.demon uses Spider, and fget.odemon uses the DATA-PHONE set, and is called automatically as a backup when the Spider connection is down.  On other systems, there is only one fget daemon, fget.demon, which use the DATA-PHONE set. 

The fget daemons use the spooling directory /usr/spool/dpd.  The file glock in that directory is used to prevent two daemons from becoming active.  After the program has successfully set the lock, it forks and the main path exits, thus spawning the daemon.  GRTS is interrogated for any output for the daemon’s station-id.  If none, fget.demon will wait up to time seconds, interrogating GRTS every minute or so to see if any output has arrived.  All problems and successful transactions are recorded in the errors file in the spooling directory. 

To restart fget.demon (in the case of hardware or software malfunction), it is necessary to first kill the old fget.demon (if still alive), and remove the lock file (if present), before initiating fget.demon. This is done automatically by /etc/rc when the system is brought up, in case there are any files waiting to come over. 

FILES

/usr/spool/dpd/∗ spool area. 

/dev/du?  DATA-PHONE set. 

/dev/dn?  ACU device. 

SEE ALSO

dpd(1C), fget(1C). 

May 16, 1980