usr.bin/chat/chat.8

.\" -*- nroff -*-
.\" manual page [] for chat 1.8
.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/chat/chat.8,v 1.15.2.3 2003/02/24 22:37:41 trhodes Exp $
.Dd October 17, 2017
.Dt CHAT 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm chat
.Nd Automated conversational script with a modem
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl evVsS
.Op Fl f Ar chat_file
.Op Fl r Ar report_file
.Op Fl t Ar timeout
.Op Fl T Ar phone_number
.Op Fl U Ar phone_number
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
program defines a conversational exchange between the computer and the modem.
.Sh OPTIONS
The following options are provided:
.Bl -tag -width ".Fl U Ar phone_number" -offset indent
.It Fl f Ar chat_file
Read the chat script from
.Ar chat_file .
The use of this option is mutually exclusive with the chat script parameters.
The user must have read access to the file.
Multiple lines are permitted in the file.
Space or horizontal tab characters should be used to separate the strings.
.It Fl t Ar timeout
Set the timeout for the expected string to be received.
If the string
is not received within the time limit then the reply string is not sent.
An alternate reply may be sent or the script will fail if there
is no alternate reply string.
A failed script will cause the
.Nm
program to terminate with a non-zero error code.
.It Fl r Ar report_file
Set the file for output of the report strings.
If you use the keyword
.Dq REPORT ,
the resulting strings are written to this file.
If this option is not used and you still use
.Dq REPORT
keywords, the stderr file is used for the report strings.
.It Fl e
Start with the echo option turned on.
Echoing may also be turned on
or off at specific points in the chat script by using the
.Dq ECHO
keyword.
When echoing is enabled, all output from the modem is echoed to stderr.
.It Fl v
Request that the
.Ar script
be executed in a verbose mode.
The
.Nm
program will then log the execution state of the chat
script as well as all text received from the modem and the output
strings sent to the modem.
The default is to log through
.Xr syslog 3 ;
the logging method may be altered with the
.Fl S
and
.Fl s
flags.
Logging is done to the
.Dq local2
facility at level
.Dq info
for verbose tracing and level
.Dq err
for some errors.
.It Fl V
Request that
.Ar script
be executed in a stderr verbose mode.
The
.Nm
program will then log all text received from the
modem and the output strings sent to the modem to the stderr device.
This device is usually the local console at the station running the chat or
the
.Xr ppp 8
program.
.It Fl s
Use stderr.
All log messages from
.Fl v
and all error messages will be sent to stderr.
.It Fl S
Do not use
.Xr syslog 3 .
By default, error messages are sent to
.Xr syslog 3 .
The use of
.Fl S
will prevent both log messages from
.Fl v
and error messages from being sent to
.Xr syslog 3 .
.It Fl T Ar phone_number
Pass in an arbitrary string, usually a phone number, that will be
substituted for the \eT substitution metacharacter in a send string.
.It Fl U Ar phone_number
Pass in a second string, usually a phone number, that will be
substituted for the \eU substitution metacharacter in a send string.
This is useful when dialing an ISDN terminal adapter that requires two
numbers.
.It Ar script
If the script is not specified in a file with the
.Fl f
option then the script is included as parameters to the
.Nm
program.
.El
.Sh CHAT SCRIPT
The
.Nm
script defines the communications.
.Pp
A script consists of one or more
.Dq expect-send
pairs of strings, separated by spaces, with an optional
.Dq subexpect-subsend
string pair, separated by a dash as in the following example:
.Pp
.Dl ogin:-BREAK-ogin: ppp ssword: hello2u2
.Pp
This line indicates that the
.Nm
program should expect the string
.Dq ogin: .
If it fails to receive a login prompt within the time interval
allotted, it is to send a break sequence to the remote and then expect the
string
.Dq ogin: .
If the first
.Dq ogin:
is received then the break sequence is not generated.
.Pp
Once it received the login prompt the
.Nm
program will send the string ppp and then expect the prompt
.Dq ssword: .
When it receives the
prompt for the password, it will send the password hello2u2.
.Pp
A carriage return is normally sent following the reply string.
It is not expected in the
.Dq expect
string unless it is specifically requested by using the \er character sequence.
.Pp
The expect sequence should contain only what is needed to identify the string.
Since it is normally stored on a disk file, it should not contain
variable information.
It is generally not acceptable to look for time
strings, network identification strings, or other variable pieces of data as
an expect string.
.Pp
To help correct for characters which may be corrupted during the initial
sequence, look for the string
.Dq ogin:
rather than
.Dq login: .
It is possible that the leading
.Dq l
character may be received in error and you may never
find the string even though it was sent by the system.
For this reason, scripts look for
.Dq ogin:
rather than
.Dq login:
and
.Dq ssword:
rather than
.Dq password: .
.Pp
A very simple script might look like this:
.Pp
.Dl ogin: ppp ssword: hello2u2
.Pp
In other words, expect ....ogin:, send ppp, expect ...ssword:, send hello2u2.
.Pp
In actual practice, simple scripts are rare.
At the vary least, you
should include sub-expect sequences should the original string not be
received.
For example, consider the following script:
.Pp
.Dl ogin:--ogin: ppp ssword: hello2u2
.Pp
This would be a better script than the simple one used earlier.
This would look
for the same login: prompt, however, if one was not received, a single
return sequence is sent and then it will look for login: again.
Should line
noise obscure the first login prompt then sending the empty line will
usually generate a login prompt again.
.Sh COMMENTS
Comments can be embedded in the chat script.
A comment is a line which
starts with the
.Sy #
(hash) character in column 1.
Such comment lines are just ignored by the chat program.
If a
.Sq #
character is to
be expected as the first character of the expect sequence, you should
quote the expect string.
If you want to wait for a prompt that starts with a # (hash)
character, you would have to write something like this:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
# Now wait for the prompt and send logout string
.br
\&'# ' logout
.Ed
.Sh ABORT STRINGS
Many modems will report the status of the call as a string.
These strings may be
.Dq CONNECTED
or
.Dq NO CARRIER
or
.Dq BUSY .
It is often desirable to terminate the script should the modem fail to
connect to the remote.
The difficulty is that a script would not know
exactly which modem string it may receive.
On one attempt, it may receive
.Dq BUSY
while the next time it may receive
.Dq NO CARRIER .
.Pp
These
.Dq abort
strings may be specified in the script using the
.Dq ABORT
sequence.
It is written in the script as in the following example:
.Pp
.Dl ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' '' ATZ OK ATDT5551212 CONNECT
.Pp
This sequence will expect nothing; and then send the string ATZ.
The expected response to this is the string
.Dq OK .
When it receives
.Dq OK ,
the string ATDT5551212 to dial the telephone.
The expected string is
.Dq CONNECT .
If the string
.Dq CONNECT
is received the remainder of the script is executed.
However, should the modem find a busy telephone, it will send the string
.Dq BUSY .
This will cause the string to match the abort character sequence.
The script will then fail because it found a match to the abort string.
If it received the string
.Dq NO CARRIER ,
it will abort for the same reason.
Either string may be received.
Either string will terminate the
.Nm
script.
.Sh CLR_ABORT STRINGS
This sequence allows for clearing previously set
.Dq ABORT
strings.
.Dq ABORT
strings are kept in an array of a pre-determined size (at compilation time);
.Dq CLR_ABORT will reclaim the space for cleared
entries so that new strings can use that space.
.Sh SAY STRINGS
The
.Dq SAY
directive allows the script to send strings to the user
at the terminal via standard error.
.Pp
.Dq SAY
strings must be enclosed in single or double quotes.
If carriage return and line feed are needed in the string to be output,
you must explicitly add them to your string.
.Pp
The
.Dq SAY
strings could be used to give progress messages in sections of
the script where you want to have
.Sq ECHO OFF
but still let the user know what is happening.
An example is:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
ABORT BUSY
ECHO OFF
SAY "Dialling your ISP...\\n"
.br
\&'' ATDT5551212
TIMEOUT 120
SAY "Waiting up to 2 min. for connection... "
CONNECT ''
SAY "Connected, now logging in...\\n"
ogin: account
ssword: pass
$ \c
SAY "Logged in OK ...\\n"
\&...
.Ed
.Pp
This sequence will only present the SAY strings to the user and all
the details of the script will remain hidden.
For example, if the above script works, the user will see:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
Dialling your ISP...
Waiting up to 2 min. for connection... Connected, now logging in...
Logged in OK ...
.Ed
.Sh REPORT STRINGS
A
.Dq report
string is similar to the ABORT string.
The difference
is that the strings, and all characters to the next control character
such as a carriage return, are written to the report file.
.Pp
The report strings may be used to isolate the transmission rate of the
modem's connect string and return the value to the chat user.
The analysis of the report string logic occurs in conjunction with the
other string processing such as looking for the expect string.
The use of the same string for a report and abort sequence is probably not
very useful, however, it is possible.
.Pp
The report strings to no change the completion code of the program.
.Pp
These
.Dq report
strings may be specified in the script using the
.Dq REPORT
sequence.
It is written in the script as in the following example:
.Pp
.Dl REPORT CONNECT ABORT BUSY '' ATDT5551212 CONNECT '' ogin: account
.Pp
This sequence will expect nothing; and then send the string
ATDT5551212 to dial the telephone.
The expected string is
.Dq CONNECT .
If the string
.Dq CONNECT
is received the remainder of the script is executed.
In addition the program will write to the expect-file the string
.Dq CONNECT
plus any characters which follow it such as the connection rate.
.Sh CLR_REPORT STRINGS
This sequence allows for clearing previously set
.Dq REPORT
strings.
.Dq REPORT
strings are kept in an array of a pre-determined size (at compilation time);
.Dq CLR_REPORT
will reclaim the space for cleared
entries so that new strings can use that space.
.Sh ECHO
The echo options controls whether the output from the modem is echoed
to stderr.
This option may be set with the
.Fl e
option, but it can also be controlled by the
.Dq ECHO
keyword.
The
.Dq expect-send
pair
.Dq ECHO ON
enables echoing, and
.Dq ECHO OFF
disables it.
With this keyword you can select which parts of the
conversation should be visible.
For instance, with the following script:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
ABORT   'BUSY'
ABORT   'NO CARRIER'
.br
\&''      ATZ
OK\\r\\n  ATD1234567
\\r\\n    \\c
ECHO    ON
CONNECT \\c
ogin:   account
.Ed
.Pp
all output resulting from modem configuration and dialing is not visible,
but starting with the
.Dq CONNECT
(or
.Dq BUSY )
message, everything will be echoed.
.Sh HANGUP
The HANGUP options control whether a modem hangup should be considered
as an error or not.  This option is useful in scripts for dialling
systems which will hang up and call your system back.  The HANGUP
options can be
.Dq ON
or
.Dq OFF .
.Pp
When HANGUP is set OFF and the modem hangs up (e.g., after the first
stage of logging in to a callback system),
.Nm
will continue
running the script (e.g.\&, waiting for the incoming call and second
stage login prompt). As soon as the incoming call is connected, you
should use the
.Dq HANGUP ON
directive to reinstall normal hang up signal behavior.
Here is a (simple) example script:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
ABORT   'BUSY'
.br
\&''      ATZ
OK\\r\\n  ATD1234567
\\r\\n    \\c
CONNECT \\c
.br
\&'Callback login:' call_back_ID
HANGUP OFF
ABORT "Bad Login"
.br
\&'Callback Password:' Call_back_password
TIMEOUT 120
CONNECT \\c
HANGUP ON
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ogin:--BREAK--ogin: real_account
\&...
.Ed
.Sh TIMEOUT
The initial timeout value is 45 seconds.
This may be changed using the
.Fl t
parameter.
.Pp
To change the timeout value for the next expect string, the following
example may be used:
.Pp
.Dl ATZ OK ATDT5551212 CONNECT TIMEOUT 10 ogin:--ogin: TIMEOUT 5 assword: hello2u2
.Pp
This will change the timeout to 10 seconds when it expects the login:
prompt.
The timeout is then changed to 5 seconds when it looks for the
password prompt.
.Pp
The timeout, once changed, remains in effect until it is changed again.
.Sh SENDING EOT
The special reply string of
.Dq EOT
indicates that the chat program should send an EOT character to the remote.
This is normally the End-of-file character sequence.
A return character is not sent following the EOT.
.Pp
The EOT sequence may be embedded into the send string using the
sequence
.Dq ^D .
.Sh GENERATING BREAK
The special reply string of
.Dq BREAK
will cause a break condition to be sent.
The break is a special signal on the transmitter.
The normal processing on the receiver is to change the transmission rate.
It may be used to cycle through the available transmission rates on
the remote until you are able to receive a valid login prompt.
.Pp
The break sequence may be embedded into the send string using the
.Dq \eK
sequence.
.Sh ESCAPE SEQUENCES
The expect and reply strings may contain escape sequences.
All of the sequences are legal in the reply string.
Many are legal in the expect.
Those which are not valid in the expect sequence are so indicated.
.Bl -tag -width ".Li \e\e000"
.It Li ''
Expects or sends a null string.
If you send a null string then it will still send the return character.
This sequence may either be a pair of apostrophe or quote characters.
.It Li \eb
represents a backspace character.
.It Li \ec
Suppresses the newline at the end of the reply string.
This is the only method to send a string without a trailing return character.
It must be at the end of the send string.
For example,
the sequence hello\ec will simply send the characters h, e, l, l, o.
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \ed
Delay for one second.
The program uses
.Xr sleep 1
which will delay to a maximum of one second.
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \eK
Insert a BREAK
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \en
Send a newline or linefeed character.
.It Li \eN
Send a null character.
The same sequence may be represented by \e0.
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \ep
Pause for a fraction of a second.
The delay is 1/10th of a second.
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \eq
Suppress writing the string to
.Xr syslogd 8 .
The string ?????? is
written to the log in its place.
.Em ( not valid in expect . )
.It Li \er
Send or expect a carriage return.
.It Li \es
Represents a space character in the string.
This may be used when it
is not desirable to quote the strings which contains spaces.
The sequence
.Sq HI TIM
and
.Sq HI\esTIM
are the same.
.It Li \et
Send or expect a tab character.
.It Li \e\e
Send or expect a backslash character.
.It Li \e\eddd
Collapse the octal digits (ddd) into a single ASCII character and send that
character.
.Em ( some characters are not valid in expect . )
.It Li ^C
Substitute the sequence with the control character represented by C.
For example, the character DC1 (17) is shown as ^Q.
.Em ( some characters are not valid in expect . )
.El
.Sh TERMINATION CODES
The
.Nm
program will terminate with the following completion codes.
.Bl -tag -width ".Li ..."
.It Li 0
The normal termination of the program.
This indicates that the script
was executed without error to the normal conclusion.
.It Li 1
One or more of the parameters are invalid or an expect string was too
large for the internal buffers.
This indicates that the program as not properly executed.
.It Li 2
An error occurred during the execution of the program.
This may be due
to a read or write operation failing for some reason or chat receiving
a signal such as
.Dv SIGINT .
.It Li 3
A timeout event occurred when there was an
.Dq expect
string without having a
.Dq -subsend
string.
This may mean that you did not program the
script correctly for the condition or that some unexpected event has
occurred and the expected string could not be found.
.It Li 4
The first string marked as an
.Dq ABORT
condition occurred.
.It Li 5
The second string marked as an
.Dq ABORT
condition occurred.
.It Li 6
The third string marked as an
.Dq ABORT
condition occurred.
.It Li 7
The fourth string marked as an
.Dq ABORT
condition occurred.
.It Li ...
The other termination codes are also strings marked as an
.Dq ABORT
condition.
.El
.Pp
Using the termination code, it is possible to determine which event
terminated the script.
It is possible to decide if the string
.Dq BUSY
was received from the modem as opposed to
.Dq NO DIAL TONE .
While the first event may be retried, the second will probably have little
chance of succeeding during a retry.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr uucp 1 Pq Pa net/freebsd-uucp ,
.Xr syslog 3 ,
.Xr syslogd 8 ,
.Xr uucico 8 Pq Pa net/freebsd-uucp
.Pp
Additional information about
.Nm
scripts may be found with UUCP documentation.
The
.Nm
script was taken from the ideas proposed by the scripts used by the
.Xr uucico 8
program.
.Sh COPYRIGHT
The
.Nm
program is in public domain.
This is not the GNU public license.
If it breaks then you get to keep both pieces.