I will test your little example and see if I can figure how I can it be put
to use here.  Found one mex example that does something similar. word of
warning for Non Msdos/(Possibly OS/2 users) I found that precompiled .mex
files don't do well, You need to compile them fresh. I tested serveral .vm
files and got some very unpleasant results. a fresh compile with mex
resulted in a sucessfull operation.
     I have 4 nodes and really only node 1 gets the business. Perhaps I
should reduce my nodeage to 2 nodes? but then again.. if a Pots caller
tries to call in and node 1 and 2 are in use; he gets "shut out".
(b ecause my dialup line is also for dialup shell accounts, it uses a
telnet script to access the bbs when a user logs in to the username bbs.   
  The reason I have getty call telnet localhost on the pots was because my
old bbs system (Synchronet 3.11) no longer had the ability to do dialup
when Rob Swindell ported the software to Unix/Linux.
     Then again as I look at how Planet Maca's has been used since 2001
(thats when I got the main system unit) it may be a good time to revamp the
whole machine. so much cruft from all of those years of working on it. Lots
of little pieces of code here and there. Do shell accounts really get used
here? Even in 2003 the number of dialup shell account usage was like maybe
2 calls a month. I am beginning to feel it would be better to focus on the
bbs itself, However the shell accounts are already fait Accompli and don't
require much maintainance. just adding users to /etc/password,/etc/shadow
and making their home directories. I know that I certainly used my shell
account from remote for debugging work. as long as Binkleyterm answers the
phone and hands off to getty I can do repairs from anywhere I can get to a
modem and a phone line.
                                        B'ichela

--- Maximus 3.01