Installing WaterGate

Before you go through the step-by-step installation, please read this chapter first. After reading it, you will know about the basic issues that are involved with WaterGate and understand the big picture when installing the smaller parts.

Program description

WaterGate supports the FidoNet and UUCP technologies. Throughout this chapter we will assume you need support for both of them. You can see them as two separate flows of messages that only touch when messages are going through the gateway. Have a look at the following two pictures that describe the distribution abilities of WaterGate.

The distribution system:

  +------+  +----+  +---------+  +-------+  +--------------+
  | UUCP |  |SMTP|  |satellite|  |FidoNet|  |optional other|
  |uplink|  |link|  |receiver |  |uplink |  |FidoNet uplink|
  +--+---+  +--+-+  +----+----+  +---+---+  +------+-------+
     |         |       \|/           |              |
  +--+---------+--------+------------+--------------+------+
  |                W  A  T  E  R  G  A  T  E               |
  +--+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+---+-----+
     | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |   |
     U P P P N P U P N P P P N U P P U U U U U U P   |
                                               +-----+-------+
  U = UUCP-style user                          |local system |
  N = FidoNet-style node                       |message bases|
  P = FidoNet-style point                      |like BBS     |
                                               +-------------+

The pictures shows a few systems that provide the big message traffic to you. The satellite receiver is optional, of course, but is put here because WaterGate supports it. Whereas you can be in more than one network with the FidoNet technology, there is only one Internet and thus you have only one UUCP uplink.

On the bottom side you see the systems that receive their messages from your system. WaterGate allows FidoNet style systems to receive UUCP messages and vice versa. The messages can also be imported into a message base for your BBS, or for you to read.

Don't worry if your system is not as big as in the picture above. You can use WaterGate as well if you are `just' a FidoNet style node or point, with possibly a UUCP feed as well.

The next picture shows what WaterGate does to provide the interchangeability of the messages between UUCP and FidoNet. The top and bottom bars are the UUCP and FidoNet message flows respectively and in the middle is the WaterGate program.

The gateway system:

  ------------------------- - - - -------------------------
   mail                 SMTP/UUCP/BAG                 news
  -----+--------+-------+-- - - - ---+------+---------+----
       |        |       |            |      |         |
   +---+---+ +--+----+ ++------------++ +---+---+ +---+---+
   |newsfix| | mail  | | mailinglists | | news  | |message|
   |AreaFix| |gateway| |    server    | |gateway| | bases |
   +---+---+ +--+----+ ++------------++ +---+---+ +---+---+
       |        |       |            |      |         |
  -----+--------+-------+- - - - - - +------+---------+----
   netmail                 FidoNet                echomail
  ------------------------ - - - - - ----------------------

The internal parts of WaterGate can be divided into the parts described above. It can process mail, news, netmail, and echomail to and from UUCP and FidoNet.

If it is necessary for a mail or netmail message to go to the other network, it goes through the mail gateway. There is a different gateway for the news, but that one is almost invisible to the users. The mail gateway can be addressed from both networks.

News flows in newsgroups, and echomail flows in echoes. Inside WaterGate we simply call them areas. To connect and disconnect areas, the users have to write a netmail or mail message to AreaFix so the system operator (that's you) doesn't have to do all that work manually.

On the far right side of the picture are the message bases. Every message that flows through an area can be imported into a message base as well. WaterGate supports the *.MSG, Squish, and JAM message base formats. In fact, there is also a netmail messagebase (not shown in the drawing).

The big box in the middle of the picture is not WaterGate's heart, but is the mailing list server. A mailing list is like a private newsgroup. If a message is sent to a mailing list, all users connected to that list receive the message by mail or netmail. So, the mailing list is just a list of receiver addresses. It is also possible to connect the mailing list to an area so you can connect a newsgroup or echo, but that is mainly intended to import the messages into a message base. This explains why the box in the middle of the drawing has so many connections.

UUCP for beginners

There are a lot "FidoNet people" that want to connect the Internet and receive e-mail and news. The "Internet related" terms used in WaterGate are not always familiar to them. This short chapter therefore explains how the "other" system works.

About UUCP

To receive mail and news and process it with WaterGate, you need a UUCP connection to an Internet Provider. These providers mostly sell PPP and SLIP connections and give you an account to login and a mailbox. After connecting to them and using special software, you can read your e-mail.

The problem with these links is that you only have one mailbox and thus one e-mail address. WaterGate was made to handle loads of e-mail addresses, sub-systems (downlinks) (basically *@*.yourdomain), so have to ask for a UUCP connection instead.

Once you have this connecting, your provider will store all news you want to receive and all e-mail for your system and your downlink systems. When you connect to them, you pick up all this mail and news using the UUCP protocol.

WaterGate cannot do this for you. WaterGate is a tosser and not a mailer. You need a program like Waffle's UUCICO or the FX-UUCICO program to send and receive your UUCP "batches" as they are called.

About SMTP

If UUCP is not available, then you might still be able to use WaterGate. We added support for SMTP and BAG systems.

SMTP is the protocol used on the Internet to transport mail messages, but not news. You need a special program to get the mail from your provider, where after WaterGate can process it. You can also use SMTP for outgoing mail. WaterGate will queue it up on your hard disk and the special application can then send it. Examples of these programs are WinDis and KA9Q.

The BAG support is a generic format for storing a lot of news (and optionally mail) messages in one file. There are programs that allow you to retrieve news from a so called "news server" and store these articles in a .BAG file. You can then use WaterGate to process these BAG files. Notice that there is no way at this moment to get news back to the news server using BAG files. Examples of programs to download news and store these as BAG files are WinDis, Slurp and Changi.

UUCP spool directory

These batches are stored in your "spool directory", which is a sub-directory on your hard disk, for example C:\SPOOL\. Your UUCP uplink system has a sub-directory there, as well as your UUCP style downlink systems. Not your FidoNet style downlink systems, they have the inbound and outbound directories.

In these spool directories you will find files with the names *.X, *.D, *.XQT, *.DAT and *.CMD. The first two are incoming (inbound, received) files. WaterGate processes these files. The last three are outgoing (outbound, to be sent) files. The XQT file will end up on the other system's hard disk like a .X file and the .DAT file as a .D file. The .CMD file is used by the UUCICO (UUCP mailer) program and tells it which files to transfer.

The .X file is the so called "envelope" file and the .D file the letter itself. Each e-mail file has a .X file in which WaterGate finds the e-mail address of the recipient and a reference to the .D file, amongst others. In case of news, the .X file contains the recipient name "rnews".

Each e-mail message has its own .X and .D file. The news is bundled and you will find one .X file for each .D file with a number of news message in it. The .D file is mostly limited by size, not by number of news messages.

Compressed news and batch headers

To reduce the transfer time, news batches are mostly compressed. E-mail is never compressed. There are two forms of compression used with UUCP: the older 12-bit or 16-bit "compress" and the nowadays more common "gzip".

Because of this compression, you cannot read the .D files with news directory. You have to decompress them first.

To make it easier for a script-based UNIX machine to detect the compression format, a special "batch header" is added to the start of the compressed file. When the file is compressed with normal compress, you will find the header "#! cunbatch" there. When it is compressed with gzip you will find the header "#! gunbatch" or "#! zunbatch" there.

WaterGate automatically detects all these headers and compressed formats and decompressed the .D files.

UUCP Name and Domain addresses

There are two key issues involved in addressing in the Internet world: UUCP name and domain address.

The "UUCP name" is the is a name of maximum 12 characters that identifies your system from your neighbors. You and your direct neighbor systems (systems you exchange messages with) need to have a unique UUCP name.

The more important "domain address" identifies your system world-wide. My UUCPname is "wsd" and my domain address is "wsd.wline.se".

When you want to create UUCP downlinks, you have to give them an (for your system) unique UUCP name. You only almost never have to give Fido downlinks a UUCP name.

Your e-mail address is always <username>@<domain address>, for example "ramon@wsd.wline.se", where the part before the @ is called "user name".

Smarthost

All mail to domains not know at your system are sent to the "smart host", which is mostly the computer of your UUCP service provider. That computer will then know how to transport the message to the end system.

Internally, WaterGate depends heavily on the UUCP names. You have to define one system as the smart host by telling WaterGate that system's UUCP name.

WaterGate terminology

To configure the WaterGate system, you have to use the WtrConf program. Inside this program you can create the areas, mailing lists, receiving users, and uplink systems. Note that the latter two are logically the same for WaterGate.

A message that is received from a user is sent to all other users connected to that same area, no matter if that user is an uplink system or not. Read that again, because all WaterGate does is based on this!

You also use the WtrConf program to configure all the other system related items. An exception is the ROUTE.TDB ASCII configuration file that contains the routing information, mapping commands, and gateway restrictions. You don't need this file right away when you start to set up your system. Most of these items will be moved into the WtrConf program some day.

Groups

WaterGate allows you to separate the areas from the different networks into 26 groups. An area has to be in at least one group, but can also be in more than one group. That way you can give one or more users access to a certain group in which they can only connect to some of the areas you have. You can also easily divide the UUCP and FidoNet networks into groups. And it is also possible to make a group read-only so that users subscribing to areas in that group cannot post messages in it, but only receive messages from it.

If a message is received in an area that is not defined in your system, you can have WaterGate create that area automatically (and optionally a message base as well). You can enable this for your uplinks and save yourself a lot of typing work.

User types

There are a few different user types that you have to be aware of before you start creating users. The big difference between the users is the way they communicate with your system: with UUCP, SMTP, BAG files or in FTN (FidoNet) packets. Aside from that, you can assign UUCP addresses to FidoNet users. That way, a user with FidoNet address 2:280/802 can have an Internet domain address like bbsw.wlink.nl. If a user on that system sends a message to Internet, his address will be a nice Internet address instead of something like user@f802.n280.z2.wlink.nl.

Resuming, there are UUCP users, SMTP users, BAG suppliers and FidoNet users.

The last thing you have to do before you start setting up the system is think about the addresses and names the system will be known as. This is very important, because a lot of errors are made with the assignment of addresses. Try to write down the addresses of your uplink(s), the addresses and names of your WaterGate system, and some of the addresses of your downlinks (users). This will make it a lot easier to configure the system.

Note that users who receive UUCP and FidoNet messages need not be defined twice in the userbase, but if the same user receives messages from two different FidoNet networks, you do have to define him/her under both addresses in the userbase.

Back to Table of Contents or continue to the next section.

Comments or questions? Send an e-mail to editor@wsd.wline.se.

Last updated 13 October 1996