Sysadmin help needed !

[gary lowell]

Greetings -

We received our first RS 6000 a week ago.  I've managed to configure
most things the way that I want, but some things still elude me.  Our
local IBM support has been cheerfully ineffectual.  Maybe someone with
more experience with AIX can comment.  We have the July updates
installed.

1.  Configuring serial ports.

    I am trying to set up a port for logins and UUCP.  The modem is a
    TB+ with the interface locked at 19200 and rts/cts flow control.
    I can cu out ok.  But dialing in, only 1 in three times do I get
    a login herald.  The other two times it disconnects immediatly,
    or displays garbage and hangs.  I should like the port to always
    answer at 19200.  Info explorer implies I should be looking at
    /etc/ports but dosn't tell me anything about /etc/ports.

    For login I enable the port with pdelay, which says that a herald 
    should not display until a character is received.  It dosn't wait.

    For bi-directional use, info explorer seems to indicate that pshare
    or pdelay will do the right thing, but I have to disable the port to
    dial out, and I have to be superuser or change the mode of the
    port to successfully dial out.  Wasn't all this supposed to be fixed
    with the july updates ?

2.  User Logins.

    I've set up a number of user logins that seem to work fine logging
    in at the console.  If I try to log in over a serial line, if the
    ID does not have a password I can login fine, if the ID has a
    password I get an incorrect login message right away, it never
    prompts for the password.  I set terminals to ALL when I set them
    up.  Is there another security feature that I've overlooked ?

3.  Escape in csh and ksh

    I'm probably missing something very obvious here, but how do I enable
    escape for file name completion in csh, and command mode in ksh.  At
    the moment Escape is treated as an ordinary character.  This is at
    the HFT without windows, or in aixterm when windows is running.
    The profiles are the shipped defaults.

  
Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I would be happy to compile
a trouble shooting guide for AIX if people would send me their favorite
tips and techniques.  Such a guide has been floating around the HP-UX
community and I've found it very helpful in the past.

Thanks,

Gary Lowell
Allegro Consultants, Inc.