[mdlug] Serial port monitoring

[Drew]

At 01:34 PM 2/3/08, Joseph C. Bender wrote:


>         Well, now that you've defined the problem domain, this 
> might easier to
>solve than you might think.
>
>         Take a look at the pppd manpage, and the "SCRIPTS" section.
>
>         There's a environment variable called "CONNECT_TIME", which, per the
>manpage is defined as:
>
>"The number of seconds from when the PPP negotiation started until the
>connection was terminated."

     Problem is, the ppp is being handled in the Windows virtual 
machine, and thus is
not likely to be visible to the Linux host. All the host is likely to 
know is that the serial
port is being used by VMware, and maybe if I'm lucky whether or not 
the modem is
talking over the phone. (There had for a while been no version of NZ 
for Linux; and I
think one might still be lacking.)

     Now this doesn't mean I can't use the idea. But I will have to 
successfully install the
software to run via Wine, and get a handle on keeping a tarball of 
the known good state
around to restore periodically, and also denying access to the rest 
of the system to
all the netzero stuff...Maybe NZ via Wine in a Kanotix VM?

     I'd still like to see what can be done with simple serial port 
monitoring first.

----

   - Drew.