Ref: 05270013
Title: Configuring the same COM port for Route and Share--Ouch
Date: 3/16/87

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.

We ran into some problems after installing 3+Route service, and I
wanted to pass on to you what happened and how we resolved it.
Our AT server, with Name/File/Print/Route/Turboshare on it, was
dying on a regular basis, maybe 3-4 times a day.

First, I moved the Name service to a different AT server to
eliminate the entire network dying every time this server went to
sleep.  I checked everything, and there were no problems in the
hardware.  We brought in another server and put the harddisk in
it, so every single board with the exception of the network
controller card and the disk drive itself was new. It began
showing the same symptoms as the AT, hanging up to the point
where CNTL/ALT/DEL wouldn't work and you would have to turn off
the machine to reboot.

The server would go down every 15 minutes. It was awful at this
point. I was in administrator hell with people calling me at home
at night with death threats and everything. (Excuse the
melodromatics, but it makes the ending better). Then I changed
the network card, so now I was down to a disk drive and an
Ethernet address chip as the only things in common. Do I fry the
disk and try new one?

YES!!!!

I brought the AT back into action with a brand new 80 meg drive
and started from scratch, when lo and behold I discovered the
problem. When I re-installed the File/Print I noticed COM1 said
"In use by another service".  That is correct because Route was
using it, But..................WHEN I BOOTED THE SERVER IT GAVE
ME A 3SHARE FAILURE BECAUSE COM1 WAS DEFINED IN THE SHARE LIST.

Apparently I was allowed to configure COM1 as a modem in Route
without checking to see if it was in use by File/Print. The
opposite way is not true. I cannot configure a COM1 printer if
Route has it first, but I can configure a COM1 Modem if File/
Print is using it.

So I had to de-install Route.......Configure COM1 as a
printer....Boot the server....Unshare a plotter configuration
that I had set up and forgotten and never used......Kill the
server........De-configure the printer.....Re-install Route..
Reboot the server....and Voila.... No more problems to this day.

So the moral of this story is:

You shouldn't let someone configure a modem if it's already a
printer.



