PMDF System Manager's Guide

If a particular method from the phone_list.dat file fails to provide a PhoneNet connection for whatever reason (terminal unavailable, script timeout, no answer, bad transmission line, no free ports, etc.), then PMDF resumes the search through phone_list.dat, trying each method that it finds for the current channel until one succeeds or the file is exhausted. Entries can be repeated if multiple connection attempts using the same method are desired.

On OpenVMS, if a failure occurs within a section of script marked as an initialization section, then before trying the next method, any additional devices specified by device will first be tried. Note that in order for device to specify more than one device, it must be a logical search list as described in Section 24.3. Initialization sections of a script file are marked with the "init" script command.