Checking the RealPort Daemon Status and ditty Output

The daemon for the RealPort driver runs in the background and monitors the connection between the PortServer and the host machine. The daemon is named ncxd. There is one daemon for each PortServer configured for RealPort.

If a RealPort daemon loses the network connection between the PortServer and the host, it will try to reconnect. The daemon can fail to reconnect if a device associated with that PortServer is busy. A device is considered busy if a print queue has print jobs in it, or a non-getty login process such as Pick is used on a tty.

Procedure

1. Log onto the console as super-user (root).
2. Enter a ditty command to check connectivity.  For example, this command should show the settings for the first port of a PortServer with the identification letter "a":
   
   ditty -a ttya01
   
   Note: Substitute your device name as appropriate. Different versions of Unix have different device names.
   
   Note: AIX users should use stty-ncxa instead of ditty.
   
   If the command reports back the settings for the port, then RealPort appears to be functioning correctly. If nothing or an error is returned, that confirms that there is a problem.
3. Enter this command: ps -ef | grep ncxd
   
   This example shows two RealPort daemons, one associated with sa14 and another with sa15.
   
   root 9852 1 0 Mar30 - 0:00 /etc/ncxd -p771 /dev/sa14 199.x.x.x
   root 9976 1 0 Mar30 - 0:00 /etc/ncxd -p771 /dev/sa15 199.x.x.x
   
   The absence of a RealPort daemon confirms that there is a problem. In any case, continue troubleshooting.