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How to Contact Us

This chapter covers the following topics:

Note: Depending on which Support Plan you subscribe to, you may or may not be able to take advantage of all of the support services described here.

Introduction

The QNX Users' Interactive Conferencing System (QUICS) runs 24 hours per day on a computer that you may access to:

Reporting bugs

Our software refresh policy provides prompt response. We provide updates to released versions of all programs, including OS modules, for download. Along with these, we provide a list of all changes made to the system. You may want to sign on once a month and make a log of this list.

Free software and technotes

We also maintain a growing list of free software that may be of interest to you. You'll find utilities, games, and megabytes of source provided by ourselves and by our customers. This source can often help you understand some of the intricacies of QNX.

Please note that the software available from the free software section is not supported by QSSL.

We also provide technotes on various topics - you'll find most of these under the /usr/free/qnx4/os/technotes directory.

Searching on QUICS

We post a file (i.e. find-ls) that lists all the files available in /usr/free. We update find-ls on a regular basis.

To search for technotes, free software, or anything else that would reside in a file under /usr/free on QUICS, simply:

  1. Go to the /usr/free directory: 
    cd /usr/free
  2. Issue the following command: 
    grep -i pattern find-ls

    This will search the find-ls file for the pattern you're looking for (the -i option tells grep to ignore case).

Electronic mail

You can send email to support@qnx.com to reach our support staff. And from within QUICS, you can send email to other QUICS participants.

Note: As a QUICS user you can receive email from the Internet, but you won't be able to reply or send email to users outside of QUICS.

QUICS newsgroups

If you'd like to make a comment or ask a question that you think other users may be interested in, then you'll want to join the various newsgroups on QUICS.

QSSL staff participate in the QUICS newsgroups every day, as do most of our more active third-party developers. It's not unusual to pose a question and have several comments on it within a few hours. You'll find topics on realtime issues, hardware, utilities, C, and so on.

About our hardware

The QUICS computer supports modem lines and an Internet connection. All modems handle a variety of baud rates and data compression protocols. Our modems are on a hunt group with the following primary number:

+1 613 591 0934

On our update system, we maintain an up-to-date listing on the number of modems, their types, and phone numbers. You can read this when you give us a call.

How to connect via modem

Since qtalk is shipped with every system, we describe how to contact us from within qtalk (see Utilities Reference). We assume that your modem is connected to the QNX device /dev/ser1. If it isn't, you'll have to tell qtalk where your modem is (via the -m option).

Phoning us via modem involves two steps:

Dial-in procedure

To phone us via modem:

  1. Set the serial port settings.

    Set your serial port settings to the following values. Refer to the section on configuring modems in the Connecting Character Devices chapter if you need help with this. 

    par=none
bits=8
  2. Start qtalk to dial us.

    If you're in North America and have a Hayes-compatible modem, you can use qtalk's dialing directory capability. The default file, /etc/config/qtalk, contains an entry called quics, which calls our phone number. For more information, see qtalk in the Utilities Reference. 

    qtalk [-m modem] quics

    The -m modem option is needed only if your modem is not connected to the /dev/ser1 device. If you're using another device, replace modem with the name of the associated device.

How to connect via the Internet

If you have an Internet connection, you'll likely want to connect to us via telnet. The telnet utility provides a terminal session similar to what you'd get if you connected to us via modem. To establish this connection, you'll be using a telnet client process. On a QNX (or UNIX) machine, this client is usually started from the shell prompt: 

telnet quics.qnx.com
Note: Since telnet is a 7-bit connection by default, the QNX terminal (qnx) won't function very well. If you must use the qnx terminal type, be sure to specify the -8 option to the telnet client. (Many have this option, although some don't.) The qansi terminal type is 7-bit (if you choose to use it) and all of the standard QNX utilities will function properly.

To transfer files between quics.qnx.com and your machine, you must connect via ftp. Just as with telnet, you'll be using a client process to connect: 

ftp ftp.qnx.com

At the time of this writing, ftp.qnx.com and quics.qnx.com will connect you to the same machine. For more information about ftp and its usage, please see your TCP/IP manuals or contact your Internet service provider.

Logging in

Once you have successfully established a connection with QUICS, you'll be able to log in. If this is your first call, you can create an account for yourself by logging in as a new user:

Login: newuser

At this point you'll be prompted for some information about yourself and your company, as well as the name you'd like to use for your personal user ID. Since there are thousands of QUICS users, we recommend that you select a user ID that consists of your first initial, middle initial, and your last name.

For instance, "Johann Sebastian Bach" would choose a user ID of "jsbach."

Each time you call QUICS, log in with your selected user ID. You'll be prompted for a password and the profile program will start.

Registering your service plan and software

If you have a service plan, now would be a good time to register it online. Simply choose the "Join a service plan" menu option. You'll be prompted for your service plan ID and your service plan password.

Note: To post a question in the quics.experts or quics.experts2 hierarchies on QUICS, you must have a service plan.

You may also register your QNX serial numbers while the profile program is running. To do this:

  1. Select the "Serial Numbers" menu option.
  2. Select "Add" from the submenu.

Registering your serial numbers gives you access to all of the product updates available for those products. These updates can be found under the /updates directory once you've logged in.

Using QUICS

Once you're connected to QUICS, you can type help at the $ prompt for a quick-reference guide that explains the various commands. You can also get an overview of how the system works. A comprehensive QUICS user's guide is available on QUICS, as well as in /etc/readme/technotes/quics.

Newsgroups are accessed online via the tin command. The tin program is a full-screen, Usenet news reader. Online help is available within tin - simply press h for help.

If you have any difficulty with QUICS, please let us know:

Email: support@qnx.com

Voice: +1 613 591 0941

We look forward to seeing you on QUICS!

Please feel free to visit our home page on the World Wide Web:

http://www.qnx.com/

Training

QNX Software Systems Limited offers several product-specific courses at our corporate headquarters in Kanata, Canada. At the time of printing, offerings include:

Realtime Programming under QNX 4
This course is designed for programmers who will be developing QNX-based realtime applications. Topics include: all forms of IPC, process issues, writing interrupt handlers, timing, and I/O managers. Also addresses how to make sure applications are portable to future versions of QNX.
Photon for Developers: a Hands-on Introduction
This course is for beginners and intermediate-level developers who will create Photon-based applications. The course covers all aspects of PhAB (Photon Application Builder) as well as IPC, window management, multilingual applications, animation, pixel-level drawing, context-sensitive help, regions and events, and more.
Realtime Programming under the Neutrino Kernel
This course is designed for programmers who will be developing Neutrino-based realtime applications. Attendees will gain actual programming experience and will develop several example programs with Neutrino.
Writing a Resource Manager
This course is designed for system-level programmers who are responsible for working on low-level device drivers ("resource managers" under Neutrino). Attendees will write several reasonably complex resource managers:

The course also discusses other resource managers, such as /dev/null, the POSIX Message Queue, various character devices, and more.

For more information, including current course schedules, check out:

http://www.qnx.com/training/training.html

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