Taylor UUCP

This is the README file for the Taylor UUCP package, originally authored by Ian Lance Taylor ian@airs.com.

This version is maintained by Thomas Quinot and Ollivier Robert, and hosted at http://github.com/quinot/taylor-uucp/, where you can find the latest version.

This package is covered by the Gnu Public License. See the file COPYING for details. If you would like to do something with this package that you feel is reasonable but you feel is prohibited by the license, contact me to see if we can work it out.

WHAT IT IS

This is the complete source code for a Unix UUCP package. It provides everything you need to make a UUCP connection. It includes versions of uucico, uusched, uuxqt, uux, uucp, uustat, uulog, uuname, uuto, uupick, and cu, as well as uuchk (a program to check configuration files), uuconv (a program to convert from one type of configuration file to another) and tstuu (a test harness for the package).

Taylor UUCP is the standard UUCP package of the Free Software Foundation.

The package currently supports the 'f', 'g' (in all window and packet sizes), 'G', 't' and 'e' protocols, as well a Zmodem protocol, the FX UUCICO 'y' protocol, and two new bidirectional protocols. If you have a Berkeley sockets library, it can make TCP connections. If you have TLI libraries, it can make TLI connections. It supports a new configuration file mechanism which I like (but other people dislike).

The package has a few advantages over regular UUCP:

• You get the source code.

• It uses significantly less CPU time than many UUCP packages.

• You can specify a chat script to run when a system calls in, allowing adjustment of modem parameters on a per system basis.

• You can specify failure strings for chat scripts, allowing the chat script to fail immediately if the modem returns BUSY.

• If you are talking to another instance of the package, you can use the new bidirectional protocol for rapid data transfer in both directions at once. You can also restrict file transfers by size based on the time of day and who placed the call.

On the other hand:

• It only runs on Unix. The code is carefully divided into system dependent and system independent portions, so it should be possible to port it to other systems. It would not be trivial.

• You don't get uuclean, uusend, uuq, uusnap, uumonitor, uutry, uupoll, etc. If you have current copies of these programs, you may be able to use them. Shell scripts versions of uuclean and uutry are provided, with most, if not all, of the functionality of the usual programs. I believe the supplied uustat program allows you to do everything that uuq, uusnap and uumonitor do. uupoll could be written as a shell script.

• The package does not read modemcap or acucap files, although you can use V2 configuration files with a BNU Dialers file or a dialer file written in my new configuration file format.

• The package cannot use SCO dialer programs directly, although it can with a simple shell script interface.

If you start using this package, I suggest that you join the mailing list (see above) to keep up to date on patches and new versions. I am also open to suggestions for improvements and modifications.

DOCUMENTATION

The documentation is in the file uucp.texi, which is a Texinfo file. Texinfo is a format used by the Free Software Foundation. You can print the documentation using TeX in combination with the file texinfo.tex.

See the TODO file for things which should be done. Please feel free to do them, although you may want to check with me first. Send me suggestions for new things to do.

The compilation instructions are in uucp.texi. Here is a summary.

Type sh configure. You can pass a number of arguments in the environment (using bash or sh, enter something like CC=gcc configure; using csh, enter something like setenv CC gcc; sh configure): * CC: C compiler to use; default is gcc if it exists, else cc * CFLAGS: Flags to pass to $CC when compiling; default -g * LDFLAGS: Flags to pass to $CC when only linking; default none * LIBS: Library arguments to pass to $CC; default none * INSTALL: Install program; default install -c or cp

The configure script will compile a number of test programs to see what is available on your system, so if your system is at all unusual you will need to pass in $CC and $LIBS correctly. You can also pass other arguments on the command line. Use configure --help for a complete list. Of particular interest:

• --prefix=DIRNAME The directory under which all files are installed. Default /usr/local.
• --with-newconfigdir=DIRNAME The directory in which to find new style configuration files. Default PREFIX/conf/uucp.
• --with-oldconfigdir=DIRNAME The directory in which to find old style configuration files. Default /usr/lib/uucp

The configure script will create config.h from config.h.in and Makefile from Makefile.in. It will also create config.status, which is a shell script which actually creates the files. Please report any configuration problems, so that they can be fixed in later versions.

Igor V. Semenyuk provided this (lightly edited) note about ISC Unix 3.0. The configure script will default to passing -posix to gcc. However, using -posix changes the environment to POSIX, and on ISC 3.0, at least, the default for POSIX_NO_TRUNC is 1. This means nothing for uucp, but can lead to a problem when uuxqt executes rmail. IDA sendmail has dbm configuration files named mailertable.{dir,pag}. Notice these names are 15 characters long. When uuxqt compiled with -posix executes rmail, which in turn executes sendmail, the later is run under POSIX environment too! This leads to sendmail bombing out with 'error opening 'M' database: name too long' (mailertable.dir). It's rather obscure behaviour, and it took me a day to find out the cause. I don't use -posix, instead I run gcc with -D_POSIX_SOURCE, and add -lcposix to LIBS.

On some versions of BSDI there is a bug in the shell which causes the default value for CFLAGS to be set incorrectly. If echo ${CFLAGS--g} echoes g rather than -g, then you must set CFLAGS in the environment before running configure. There is a patch available from BSDI for this bug. (Reported by David Vrona).

On AIX 3.2.5, and possibly other versions, cc -E does not work, reporting Option NOROCONST is not valid. Test this before running configure by doing something like touch /tmp/foo.c cc -E /tmp/foo.c This may give a warning about the file being empty, but it should not give the Option NOROCONST warning. The workaround is to remove the ",noroconst" entry from the "options" clause in the "cc" stanza in /etc/xlc.cfg. (Reported by Chris Lewis).

Examine config.h and Makefile to make sure they're right.

Edit policy.h for your local system.

Type make.

Use uuchk to check configuration files. You can use uuconv to convert between configuration file formats.

Type make install to install. Note that by default the programs are compiled with debugging information, and they are not stripped when they are installed. Read the man page for strip for more information.

On older System V based systems which do not have the setreuid system call, problems may arise if ordinary users can start an execution of uuxqt, perhaps indirectly via uucp or uux. UUCP jobs may wind up executing with a real user ID of the user who invoked uuxqt, which can cause problems if the UUCP job checks the real user ID for security purposes. On such systems, it is safest to put run-uuxqt never in the config file, so that uucico never starts uuxqt, and invoke uuxqt directly from cron.