Unix and NT communicating?

[Joe Armstrong]

On 10 Jan 1999, Hal Snyder wrote:

> I'm probably misreading something. The question is, can Erlang systems
> running on Unix and Win32 communicate? For example, I'm considering
> connecting FreeBSD and Windows 95 systems running erlang.
> 
> On the main web site, at http://www.erlang.org/download.html it says
> of the "Windows user" Erlang kit:
> 
>   Note the distribution protocol used in this release is incompatible
>   with that used in the Unix release - this will be corrected in the
>   next release.
> 
> Is the "distribution protocol" the protocol used for inter-host
> communication? 
> 
	Yes

> Because at http://www.whatis.com/erlang.htm they say
> 
>   Erlang's bytecode is identical on all platforms, and a network of
>   Erlang nodes may consist of any mix of NT, UNIX, or other supported
>   platforms.
> 

    Sorry for the confusion. Let me explain in more detail...

    All Erlang  nodes (a node is  a complete  Erlang system running on
some platform) can communicate in a transparent manner. For example on
an NT machine you  could send a arbitrary Erlang  message to any other
machine (solaris, freeBSD etc).

    A couple of weeks before the OSE  release we discovered a security
hole in the system and changed the implementation to deal with this.

    We got as far as making the changes for  the unix systems, but NOT
for the WIN32 systems. So all the unix  systems CAN talk transparently
to each other but they will not be able to talk to the WIN32 system.

    The  Win32   build is more    painful than the  unix   build so we
distributed the  unix source + makefiles (with  the new security fixed
protocol) and the  win32 binaries (with the  old protocol).  These two
systems cannot talk to each other.

    Last  week tony   (tony@REDACTED) successfully built  the
win32  system so that it can  talk to the unix  systems... We will put
this on the web site ASAP. Mail tony for more info.

>      *                       *                          *
> 
> Second question: what's the best way to do device control from Erlang?
> Suppose I wanted to talk to some PC telephony devices, e.g. Dialogic
> cards? 

	See tobbe's answer
	
	/Joe

--
Joe Armstrong  Computer Science Laboratory  +46 8 719 9452
AT2/ETX/DN/SU  Ericsson Telecom SE-126 25 Stockholm Sweden 
joe@REDACTED    http://www.ericsson.se/cslab/~joe