[18733] in Hotline Meeting
Re: Users connecting Powerbook/Duos to Printers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Darrin E. Robinson)
Mon Oct 4 11:16:21 1993
To: dot@MIT.EDU, mhbraun@MIT.EDU
Cc: op@MIT.EDU, hotline@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 93 11:16:03 EDT
From: Darrin E. Robinson <darrin@MIT.EDU>
Dot sent me this:
Hi Darrin,
A faculty member has learned that someone is hooking a Mac up to
the AppleTalk port on the printer in their private cluster. Did
we come up with an elegant solution, or did we go with the gum?
Thanks,
Mhbraun sent me this:
I noticed today that a user had his PowerBook hooked up directly into the
AppleTalk port of Python. I would have gone over to talk to him immiediately,
but I wanted to get the facts first, and by the time I got back, he was gone.
I have a couple questions:
1) Does this create a denial of service for network users ?
2) Does it cause any problem other than evading quota ?
3) Darrin: Can the public HP's be set to syslog or something when they start
getting data from the Appletalk port ?
and
4) What else can we do about this
The answers are:
1.) this DOES create a denial of service but only temporarily. It causes
the printservers to send a message to users that will only confuse the
general user... they will get the message "Busy with other I/O" from
the printserver (via zephyr).
2.) It doesn't cause any serious problems other than evading quota, and
causing the Athena print queues (on printservers) to be blocked.
3.) They cannot SYSLOG which port they are using... this would be TOO chatty.
We can't tell when people are using it UNLESS we continuously monitor
the printer via SNMP.
4.) We could "plug" the localtalk port OR pull the card.
Note: this isn't the first time that this has happened... I have caught (well
nearly caught) someone doing this in M66-080. Use the "hpcheck" command with
the -x option to get jucier information:
example;
.../a/darrin> hpcheck -x pindar-p
Bytes Received : 88094056 (since power-on or reconfig)
Bytes Sent : 117977 (since power-on or reconfig)
Periph panel message: 00 READY
Periph paper state : 0
Paper Status : (0) Paper Okay
Periph job name : Grant Emison; document: Table
Periph fatal error : 0
Card fatal error : 0
Max read buffers : 8
Curr read requests : 8
Max write buffers : 1
.../a/darrin> hpcheck pindar-p
busy with other I/O: <not available>
The command "hpcheck" is in the net-tools locker. The message "busy with
other I/O" is what Athena users get when someone does the Appletalk stuff.
I presented this problem before, and the major solution is to PULL out all
of the LocalTalk cards from the printers. ;-<
Darrin
