I was still able to connect just now without changing anything else on my side.
The secret sauce I found for bouncing connections to other hosts based on incoming connections is this:
!
line vty 60 63
?exec-timeout 0 0
?vacant-message ''
?no login
?rotary 91
?autocommand telnet actual.host.name port /quiet
?no activation-character
?transport input pad
?autohangup
!
rotary is the subaddress for that pool of lines.
no activation-character says don't wait for the user to send any characters before sending out the motd / login / running commands
vacant-message '' gets rid of any "press a key to activate this console" type messages
you can put other commands in autocommand instead of telnet, just be careful that whatever command you run doesn't dump out to a shell when done.
(menus using menu-exit will return to a shell instead of disconnecting. use exit to disconnect)
I've got
show clock running on 78323590 which dumps the current date/time as synced from pool.ntp.org and then disconnects.
if you're using both direct mapping and menus, you may want to use
alias exec to define the commands so you can easily change them one place for both.
!
! alias exec tpcbbs telnet tpcbbs.local /quiet
alias exec tpcbbs menu offline
alias exec starwars telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl /quiet
alias exec telehack telnet telehack.com /quiet
!
menu offline title '
Sorry. That host is currently offline.'
menu offline prompt 'Press RETURN to continue.'
menu offline command q menu-exit
menu offline default q
menu offline single-space
!
Now that I've sort of figured that much out, I can't seem to get the async lines to respond to telnet anymore, which I had working yesterday. They connect, but I never get anything back from the modems, and then the connection times out.
If I manage to get that working again, I can split the modem pool in half and call it a success.
