Subject: Re: Using the new upload-download feature

From: UMABnet Help Account <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 10:18:42 -0400

Thanks, Paul.

Unfortunately for us, we can't assume that our users have access to zmodem
on the receiving end, and they do want to do uploads as well as downloads. 
I'm also not sure we want to globally enable the pipe command.

We've been teaching people how to a) export to a text file, b) download, 
and c) delete the exported file.  It's frustrating for many new users, 
and this integrated upload-download feature seemed like it would make 
life simpler, if only we could get it to work.

Miriam Jaffe, for the HELP Team

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The HELP Team * Information Services * University of Maryland at Baltimore
   100 North Greene Street, 2nd floor * Baltimore, MD * 21201 * U.S.A.
               410 706 HELP * [email-masked]

On Fri, 5 Jul 1996, Paul O Bartlett wrote: 
> On Thu, 4 Jul 1996, UMABnet Help Account wrote:
> > I am having difficulty getting the integrated serial upload-download 
> > feature to work on our system.  [...]

>     I have good luck (starting with 3.91 and continuing all the way
> through 3.94) downloading from Un*x Pine to my DOS PC using the Pine
> pipe feature and a simple shell script.  
[...]
> It starts a Zmodem transfer, which ProComm Plus v2 on my PC
> automatically picks up, and the transfer goes without a problem.  
[...]
>     I admit I have not worked out a method for uploading directly into
> Pine.  Usually I do uploads separately.  

> Paul                             <[email-masked]>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
> Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
> Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: UMABnet Help Account <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 19:33:04 -0400

I am having difficulty getting the integrated serial upload-download 
feature to work on our system.  The few paragraphs of help in the 
Setup/Config under upload-command, upload-command-prefix, 
download-command, and download-command-prefix are not detailed enough.

Setting the download-command to sz -a causes a mail message to be 
exported to a file called PdNNNNNN on the local machine, but leaves the 
Pine session stuck with some zmodem result message garbage beginning with 
asterisks on the screen that it tries to process as commands, causing it 
to go to the flag screen and set and unset the flag until all the 
characters are processed.

Setting the upload-command to rz fails completely.

Am I missing something obvious?

Has someone prepared a more detailed help document that I could look at?

We're running Pine 3.94 on AIX 3.2.5 on our test machine.  Testing has 
mostly been from Hyperterminal on Windows 95.

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 11:56:47 -0400

I have good luck (starting with 3.91 and continuing all the way
through 3.94) downloading from Un*x Pine to my DOS PC using the Pine
pipe feature and a simple shell script.  I just have enable-pipe-
command (or whatever it's called without looking) set in my
configuration.  Then, whenever I want to download a message, I just
enter the vertical bar (|) as a command and answer the prompt with
sendz, which is what I have named this script:

      #!/bin/sh
      umask 066
      trap "rm -f $HOME/tmp/$$junk" 0
      cat > $HOME/tmp/download.$$$
      sz -a $HOME/tmp/download.$$$
      rm -f $HOME/tmp/download.$$$
      umask 077

It starts a Zmodem transfer, which ProComm Plus v2 on my PC
automatically picks up, and the transfer goes without a problem.  (The
only thing is that the received file is named download.nnn, where 'nnn'
is the first three digits of the Un*x process number, so you have to
watch for that.)  Of course, someone else might need to modify the
directory path for a different configuration.

    I admit I have not worked out a method for uploading directly into
Pine.  Usually I do uploads separately.  Hope this may be of help to
somebody.