Amiga Plus 1995 #2

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Amiga Plus 1995 #2 / Amiga Plus CD - 1995 - No. 2.iso / internet / faq / englisch / alt.sys.amiga.uucp < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-04-11 | 65.7 KB | 1,623 lines

Archive-name: amiga/AmigaUUCP-FAQ/part1 AMIGA-UUCP-FAQ version 2.A.2 [Posting 35] MONTHLY POSTING, last update May 12 1994 This FAQ is posted monthly (28th of month) author: Marc SCHAEFER, <schaefer@alphanet.ch> Bugs, typos, ideas to <UUCP-Faq@alphanet.ch> (ch stands for Switzerland) NOTE: The primary goal for this FAQ is to prevent questions from looping over and over. If you have new and interesting material, post it to alt.sys.amiga.uucp with "Addition to FAQ" somewhere in the subject. I will add it for the next "release". You may also send any ideas, changes, flames, typos to the address UUCP-Faq@alphanet.ch. They will be incorporated in the next release with your name in the CHANGES section as a reward :-) NOTE TO UUCP-BEGINNERS: Please take some of your time and READ the UUCP documentation. Most of the questions posted on a.s.a.u are related to manual pages. This FAQ contains also some information on common problems and utilities. Don't forget to get the FAQS from news.announce.newusers. You may also read UUMAN:Standards (for UUCP internals) and UUMAN:how2usenet. CHANGES FROM ORIGINAL MATT DILLON'S FAQ ARE NOTED WITH A (*). To skip to a topic, search for the roman numeral surrounded by parenthesis. For example, (I). FAQ.1 (this file) (*) 0. Changes from last posting (*) I. Introduction to alt.sys.amiga.uucp[.patches] II. Introduction to AmigaUUCP (*) III. Principal utilities IV. Constructing mail addresses V. Using DCRON VI. US domain clarification FAQ.2 (a different post) (*) VII. Common problems (new, please submit things to go in here). VIII. Using SENDMAIL directly. (*) IX. Other UUCP utilities. (*) X. How to get UUCP stuff ? (*) XI. BBS software supporting UUCP. (*) XII. Other UUCP implementations for AmigaOS. (*) XIII. Unresolved topics. (0) RECENT CHANGES TO THIS FILE Changes are listed below Cosmetical, None (I) INTRODUCTION TO ALT.SYS.AMIGA.UUCP[.PATCHES] (1) Configuration ALT.SYS.AMIGA.UUCP and ALT.SYS.AMIGA.UUCP.PATCHES are two newsgroups dedicated to the UUCP system for the Amiga microcomputer, AmigaUUCP. Both news groups are gatewayed to two mailing lists containing additional recipients who would otherwise not have access to the ALT groups. That is, posting to an alt group will automatically relay to the appropriate mailing list, and mailing to the mailing will automatically relay to the alt group. If you do not have ALT group access and are not on the mailing list, and would like to be on the mailing list, send your request to: amiga-uucp-request@apollo.west.oic.com and/or amiga-uucp-patches-request@apollo.west.oic.com To get off the mailing list, you can send your request to either address. Matt Dillon manually reads this alias. Note that you must provide a proper return address as part of your signature if you are a UUCP node so he can properly format your return address. If you are on the internet (i.e. have a fully domained address), it isn't a problem. TO POST ARTICLES VIA THE MAILING LIST, send email containing your posting to either of the following two addresses: amiga-uucp@idiom.berkeley.ca.us amiga-uucp-patches@idiom.berkeley.ca.us Sending email to either address causes it to be automatically posted to the alt.sys.amiga.uucp[.patches] newsgroup. You do not have to be on the mailing list to be able to post via the list. Report any problems to: amiga-uucp-owner@idiom.berkeley.ca.us amiga-uucp-patches-owner@idiom.berkeley.ca.us (2) Usage Of [Note: Original author is Matt Dillon. See next comment] The purpose of alt.sys.amiga.uucp is to convey the bulk of any discussion relating to AmigaUUCP. Discussion, bug reports, questions, etc... The purpose of alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches is for the posting of any source code, scripts, or binaries relating to AmigaUUCP. Full distributions will NEVER be sent over alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches. Anybody may post to alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches and, in fact, it is best that any code you wish to submit to be merged into the master distribution that Matt Dillon keep be submitted to this newsgroup instead of to me personally. This will allow anybody to pick off the code and immediately implement it on their own system without waiting for the next master distribution. Matt Dillon will also use alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches to post updates to the current master distribution, generally small to medium sized SHAR or uuencoded LHARC files. Matt Dillon personally would like to get a system together so multiple-source postings can be archived in a text form instead of a uuencoded form because all netnews is compressed anyway, and compressing uuencoded lharc files generally makes the result larger than the original instead of smaller. (3) BUG / ENHANCEMENT REPORTS [Note that the following text author is considered to be the current UUCP source maintainer which seems to be Michael B. Smith, mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us] The alt.sys.amiga.uucp and alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches groups are fed through a filter when they reach my machine, and any bug or enhancement reports of a specific format will be automatically extracted and appended to my TODO file. To issue a bug report or enhancement request, use the following format: ##B unique-id <bug report goes here> ## Note that there are TWO '#'s. ##B stands for a bug report, ##E stands for an enhancement request. WARNING! The ##'s must begin a line, you CANNOT PRECEDE ## WITH WHITESPACE. Doing so will result in the filter passing the report by. For example, the ##B/## lines in the example above, not being flush with the left margin, will be ignored by my filter program. The unique-id should be a unique identifier for your bug report, for example, I might use '##B dillon.23'. Do NOT encode the date in the unique ID because my filter program will automatically extract the Date: and From: fields from the news message header. Matt Dillon will use the ID when refering to previous bug reports rather than posting the whole bug report. (4) This FAQ sheet If you have information you think would be useful on this FAQ sheet, please submit it to UUCP-Faq@alphanet.ch. (II) INTRODUCTION TO AmigaUUCP This section consists of a brief introduction to AmigaUUCP. It is not meant to describe installation of the distribution. Installation of the distribution is more involved and best served by the instructions that come with the distribution. AmigaUUCP was originally derived from GNU-UUCP and UUPC (was UUPC derived from GNU? I dunno). This was several years ago. It eventually fell into William Loftus's hands who molded it into a workable system for the Amiga. From there, about a year later, it fell into my hands and has since remained. What little GNU/UUPC code remains is in uucico, and even that is rapidly disappearing. AmigaUUCP is now almost entirely made up of code written after the original port to the Amiga. At this point, there is no comparison at all between the older GNU/UUPC stuff and the state of the art AmigaUUCP distribution. AmigaUUCP is a public domain project, though not properly in the public domain because all authors involved have maintained copyrights on the code. legally, this may not mean much, but it does give us a sense of security and more control over what is done with the code. Be that as it may, the entire distribution, source and all, is available to anybody who wants it. There are about a dozen principal authors and a few dozen contributors, not to mention the hundreds of people who have sent in helpful suggestions and bug reportrs. What is AmigaUUCP? Well, if you are reading this article then you have some idea how EMAIL and NETNEWS works ... AmigaUUCP is a set of utilities and documentation to implement an EMAIL/NETNEWS link directly on your amiga. All you need to do is find what is known as a 'feed' site who is willing to give you a UUCP connection, and, of course, a modem with which to communicate with that feed. (III) PRINCIPAL UTILITIES AmigaUUCP is made up of a plethora of utilities. Many of the utilities mimic their UNIX counterparts but it should be noted that none are really based on actual UNIX C code except for those sections still existing from the original GNU/UUPC port. Only the major utilities are listed below: UUCico UUCico is the workhorse of the system. It calls your feed site via the modem and transfers both outgoing and incoming mail and news. This mail and news will have been previously stored by you or your feed site. It has been updated a lot, mainly for reliability reasons. Last version is uucico_sd3.lha. Getty Getty handles incoming calls. It allows remote login (interactive and uucico logins). Sendmail/RMail Sendmail/RMail is the workhorse of the MAIL subsystem. The two utilities are actually the same executable just renamed and I will refer to them collectively as 'sendmail' from now on. Sendmail handles incoming mail, breaking it apart and sending it to the appropriate mailbox, or re-queueing it if it is simply passing through your system to another system down the line. Sendmail deals with any aliases you might have defined and also with any domains you have defined for routing email. Sendmail also handles, under the aegis of 'rmail', all incoming mail. RNews RNews handles all incoming news, including local news you send out. It breaks apart compressed batches and creates an individual file for each article in the UUNEWS: directory. It also creates a directory for each newsgroup. A lot of patches have been made to increase reliability, and speed. BatchNews Batchnews compresses and batches any news you have sent posted into a single batch file, making its transfer to your feed that much more efficient. Read the Newssetup.doc in the distribution for more information on how to set up news. DMail DMail is the amiga's mail shell. It scans your mail box and presents mail in an orderly fashion, allowing you to reply to the mail and do other operations. DNews DNews is the amiga's news reader. It is not quite as sophisticated as RN but is getting there. It sports an intuition windowing system to make it easy to scan through news. UUcp UUcp (the command) can be used to copy files from your local system to some of your neighbours. Note that the way it is implemented on the AmigaUUCP system is a little different than in Unix. In Unix, as soon as the uucp command has been executed, a copy of the implied file is done in a data file in the spool directory. Then uucico copies it to the other unix system that extracts the file from the data file. In AmigaUUCP, if sending the file is only read while UUCico is online, and that explains why if you UUCP a file which path is NOT authorized in the UULIB:Security file, there will be an error while online. This prevents the ability to forward the file to another host. However most of the time in UNIX, uucp is very restricted. AmigaUUCP does not allow directory-deep file send. For sending to a far site, BMS is more convenient. (IV) CONSTRUCTING MAIL ADDRESSES (1) GENERAL Unfortunately, the internet mail system is made up of a huge number of nearly incompatible networks. Mail addresses are constructed with various types of punctuation that mean various things .. indeed, some punctuation means one thing in one domain and another in another domain. I have found that the absolute best way to construct a mail address is either with the '@' format or with a '!' path. If your feed is a 'smart' host, any fully domained mail address can be replied to with simply: user@fubar.subdomain.subdomain....domain dillon@apollo.west.oic.com Any address with dots in it is called a fully domained address. Unfortunately, there are a few exceptions... any address ending with .UUCP is *NOT* I repeat, *NOT* a domained address... it's a hack that some sendmails will add to properly route the mail internally. This hack generally extends to the From: field of an email message, and AmigaUUCP will do this, but not being a domain, you cannot SPECIFY a .UUCP trailer in the To: address. For example, my UUCP address was: uunet.uu.net!overload Note that there is NO .UUCP specification tacked on to overload. Note also that when you specify your UUCP address in your signature you should start with a fully domained machine name, *not* one ending with .UUCP. On other fronts, some unexperienced administrators will give their machines a full domain name without properly registering it. If you have not registered your domain with the proper authorities, DO NOT GIVE YOUR MACHINE A FULL DOMAIN. For example, when I first connected to my feed, which is uunet, I did not have a .US domain and so my machine name was simply 'overload'. After I registered in the .US domain I changed my machine name to its registered equivalent, 'overload.Berkeley.CA.US'. (2) BANG PATHS Nearly all the systems on the internet accept what are known as bang paths. There are only a few exceptions. One of the design decisions for AmigaUUCP was to convert all addresses into bang paths before sending them out. There have been one or two sites (so far) that have been unable to run AmigaUUCP because the feed they picked was running news software so old it did not recognize bang paths. To those sites I say: find a different feed, AmigaUUCP would become extremely messy were I to implement UNIX sendmail style address parsing. A bang path work by specifying the exact path your mail is to go along, in the following format: first_machine!machine!machine!users_machine!user Any machine name in the path may be a fully domained name. If you have a smart feed it will be able to optimize the path accordingly. For example, the bang path to me would normally be: uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon If your feed has a STUPID mailer, it may be necessary to use a bang path to get *past* your feed to a nearby site that has a SMART mailer. For example, lets say your feed is named 'fubar' and has a dumb mailer. Let us also say that the feed has a UUCP connection to 'harvard' which just happens to have a smart mailer. To get your message to me you might use: fubar!harvard!uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon your feed may or may not accept harvard's fully domained name, which is harvard.harvard.edu, it depends on how stupid your feed's mail system is. If it does, it makes more sense to use: fubar!harvard.harvard.edu!uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon (3) INTERNET DOMAINS VERSES UUCP MAP ENTRIES The internet domain system is based on domain servers, real time servers residing on known machines that know all the machines in a particular domain and how to get to them. When you send mail through an internet machine, like this (assuming you have a UUCP connection to UUNET): uunet!caps.ibm.com!user uunet (actually uunet.uu.net) will talk to the domain server for the .COM domain to find caps.ibm.com (a name I made up). UUCP works differently. While the internet is a real time network, UUCP is a batch network. UUCP has what is known as a MAP entry for every UUCP site that submits one. If you are a new UUCP site just connected to your feed, you should send a MAP entry to the appropriate administrator. A MAP entry is *NOT* a domain entry. The UUCP MAPS are used by machines on the USENET to find other machines on the USENET without the aid of domains. Not all machines on the USENET use MAPS to find some destination. uunet.uu.net does, so here is an example. I can send email from overload to (again, a made up name): uunet.uu.net!fubar!user Even if uunet does not talk directly to fubar.. assuming fubar has a MAP entry. uunet will search its maps to find the best path to reach fubar, and then route the mail accordingly. The actual route that uunet constructs might be: mcsun!gab!fubar!user If your feed is a machine that does NOT use maps, then you must specify an explicit bang path to get past your feed to a site that does. For example, lets say your feed is named 'char00' and has a dumb mailer, but connects to harvard.harvard.edu via UUCP. You want to email me. you can do it in two ways: char00!harvard!uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon. or char00!harvard!overload.Berkeley.CA.US!dillon But, since your mailer is dumb, you would not be able to use: char00!overload.Berkeley.CA.US!dillon If, on the otherhand, char00 is a SMART USENET mailer that uses the USENET MAPS (but still isn't on the internet itself), you can use: char00!overload!dillon Finally, if char00 is on the INTERNET, you can use: char00!overload.Berkeley.CA.US!dillon (4) WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS - BOUNCED EMAIL email will bounce for a variety of reasons. The fact that the global email system is made up of so many different types of mail systems causes lots of havoc... in many cases a system will munge the path you attempt to send email through by misinterpreting it or by attempting to 'optimize' it. When all else fails, and your attempt to reply to a piece of email bounces, you may have to construct the return address by hand. Several possibilities come to mind. You want to use the 'h' command from dmail to look at the actual mail headers (use dmail's help command to get full info on the header command). You want to look at both the original message that was sent to you, and the headers of your BOUNCED reply. -------- SAMPLE OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE ------- From uunet!SASK.USask.CA!telepro!oliphant Fri, 28 Dec 90 13:04:57 PST Received: by overload.Berkeley.CA.US (V1.07/Amiga) id AA00000; Fri, 28 Dec 90 13:04:57 PST Received: from sask.usask.ca by uunet.UU.NET (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA22874; Fri, 28 Dec 90 01:30:48 -0500 Received: from herald.USask.Ca by SASK.USask.CA with PMDF#10255; Fri, 28 Dec 1990 00:30 CST Received: by herald.USask.Ca (5.57/GLH-1.0); Fri, 28 Dec 90 00:30:06 -0600 id AA01058 for amiga-uucp-patches-request@overload.berkeley.ca.us Received: by telepro.UUCP (1.05D/Amiga) id AA04612; Thu, 27 Dec 90 21:25:00 CST Date: Thu, 27 Dec 90 21:25:00 CST Message-Id: <9012280325.AA04612@telepro.UUCP> X-Envelope-To: amiga-uucp-patches-request@overload.berkeley.ca.us From: uunet!SASK.USask.CA!telepro!oliphant (Mike Oliphant) To: amyuucp@sask.usask.ca Subject: Mailing list Please add me to amiga-uucp-patches. Thanks. -- Mike Oliphant UUCP: alberta!herald!telepro!oliphant Internet: oliphant@telepro.uucp -------- ADDRESS I SENT MY RESPONSE TO ------ uunet!SASK.USask.CA!telepro!oliphant -------- SAMPLE OF BOUNCE THAT CAME BACK TO ME ------- From uunet!sask.usask.ca!postmaster Mon, 31 Dec 90 01:02:30 PST Received: by overload.Berkeley.CA.US (V1.07/Amiga) id AA00000; Mon, 31 Dec 90 01:02:30 PST Received: from sask.usask.ca by uunet.UU.NET (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA13985; Sat, 29 Dec 90 17:18:48 -0500 Date: Sat, 29 Dec 1990 16:18 CST Message-Id: <B13C1C282040350C@SASK.USask.CA> X-Envelope-To: overload!dillon@uunet.UU.NET From: PMDF Mail Server <uunet!sask.usask.ca!Postmaster> To: overload!dillon Subject: Undeliverable mail: local delivery failure The message could not be delivered to: Addressee: telepro!oliphant Reason: %MAIL-E-LOGLINK, error creating network link to node TELEPRO -SYSTEM-F-NOSUCHNODE, remote node is unknown -------- END OF SAMPLE HEADERS -------------------- So, why did my response fail? First, I have to tell you something about mail headers: Except for Received: headers, intervening systems can and will turn the standard headers into mush. That is, the 'From ' encapsulation, the From: header, the To: header, even the Reply-To: header might be modified by an intervening system. There are only two things that are not mushed. They are the Received: headers and the mail message itself - which might contain the sender's signature at the end. This is a good reason to always put your email address in your signature, and always base it at a known internet node so anybody can figure out how to get back to you. A Received: header is PREPENDED by *EVERY* site a piece of email goes through, and is NEVER modified by any other site. These headers tell you *exactly* how the mail was routed. If you look at the original message, you will note that one of the machines, probably SASK.USask.CA, modified the From: line in an attempt to optimize it: From: uunet!SASK.USask.CA!telepro!oliphant (Mike Oliphant) Note that, by the From: line, SASK.USask.CA talks directly to telepro. The 'From ' encapsulation was also modified, and there is no Reply-To: header. When I sent my reply to SASK using From:, the mail bounced because SASK was unable to find telepro ... if you look at the Received: lines you can see why ... because telepro talked to Herald before getting to Sask. It is amusing because SASK is probably the node that ripped out Herald's name in the From: and 'From ' lines in the first place. Also, take a look at Mike's signature line: Mike Oliphant UUCP: alberta!herald!telepro!oliphant Internet: oliphant@telepro.uucp Interesting, eh? The Internet: address is actually wrong (sorry Mike!) using .UUCP is not legal because it is not a proper domain. However, if you forward through an internet host that also uses the UUCP MAPS, and assuming mike is in the maps, the address *will* work. It's the first address that confirms our fears... mike shows telepro talking to herald. This combined with the knowledge we gained from the Received: lines tells us that the path: SASK.USask.CA!herald!telepro!oliphant Will work as a return address. When in doubt, trace the Received: headers to determine the return path. Sometimes a UUCP MAP entry will be incorrect, in which case using the Received: headers will be the ONLY way to reply to a message. There are some situations which are impossible to reply to ... if a message goes through a broken node that allows it to be propogated one way but not the other, even using the headers will not work. Also, some sites will attempt to optimize the path you specified. If SASK.USask.CA were to optimize the path: SASK.USask.CA!herald!telepro!oliphant To SASK.USask.CA!telepro!oliphant Before processing, the mail could fail due to SASK.USask.CA breaking itself. There are many nodes, especially gateways between networks, that are broken in this manner and there will be times when you will not be able to reply at all. (V) USING DCRON Many AmigaUUCP users leave their machines on 24 hours a day. With the advent of 2.0, and assuming the serial.device gets fixed, you can conceivably run your Amiga 24 hours a day under a heavy load for weeks without a crash. DCron is a program that runs in the background and executes other programs at intervals defined in S:CRONTAB. It is quite flexible.. you can run a program or script at specific times of day, every X minutes, only on certain days of the week, or even only in certain months! I will not discuss the actual format, that can be looked up in UUMAN:DCron. There are two reasons to run DCron: (1) Maintenance. (2) Automatic polling. If you call a system on a regular basis and want to automate the process, you can run UUCico from DCron at specific times of the day. First maintenance. Programs like UUCico, Getty, DCron itself, and sendmail generate log files which, if left alone, would eventually fill up your disk. Also, if you are receiving NEWS, you need to delete expired articles. Due to the volume of news, not deleting old articles can fill up your HD very quickly. The TRIMFILES utility trims log files to a specified number of lines, default 100. I normally run TRIMFILES on the various log files once a day early in the morning. The S:CRONTAB entry I use is: # trim log files at 3:01 A.M. 1 3 * * * uucp:c/trimfile tmp:dcron.log uu:spool/logfile getty:logfile Note that the file paths will be somewhat different for your system. Second, keeping your UUNEWS: directory reasonable. The TRIMNEWS utility will handle this. TRIMNEWS scans your UULIB:Newsgroups file for the list of newsgroups, then scans each news group deleting articles over N days old, where N is specified in the Newsgroups file. A sample NewsGroups file might be: comp.sys.amiga 7 comp.sys.amiga.tech 7 comp.sys.amiga.programmer 7 comp.sys.amiga.announce 7 alt.sys.amiga.uucp 14 alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches 30 Which essentially tells TRIMNEWS to delete all articles in comp.sys.amiga.* over 7 days old (7 days from reception), to delete all articles in alt.sys.amiga.uucp over 14 days old, and to delete all articles in alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches over 30 days old. I normally run TRIMNEWS in the morning too, my S:CRONTAB file has: # run TRIMNEWS at 3:06 A.M. 6 3 * * * uucp:c/trimnews --- DCRON is also useful to control the modem configuration. You can run the Getty utility from DCron to turn off the modem speaker while you are asleep. I use DCRON for other things as well, such as to automatically revise UUNET's amiga-uucp[-patchces] mailing list whenever I make a local change, and to backup my hard disk. I also use it to post this sheet once a month. (VI) .US DOMAIN CLARIFICATION This is a clarification to the information on registering in a .US domain. It turns out that you can register in the .US domain even if your 'feed' node is NOT on the internet. What you need to do is find some node that IS on the internet that is willing to be an MX FORWARDER to your machine (via a path). This might prove difficult, but it is possible. END OF FAQ PART 1. Archive-name: amiga/AmigaUUCP-FAQ/part2 AMIGA-UUCP-FAQ version 2.B.17 [Posting 35] MONTHLY POSTING, last update Oct 29 15:57 This FAQ is posted monthly (28th of month) author: Marc SCHAEFER, <schaefer@alphanet.ch> Bugs, typos, ideas to <UUCP-Faq@alphanet.ch> (ch stands for Switzerland) NOTE: This is the second part of the FAQ. The first part contains more general information. This part contains technical problems and solutions to common AmigaUUCP problems, along with information on how to get UUCP distributions, patches, enhancements and third party utilities. You should however consider reading the first part first. CHANGES FROM ORIGINAL MATT DILLON'S FAQ ARE NOTED WITH A (*). To skip to a topic, search for the roman numeral surrounded by parenthesis. For example, (I). FAQ.1 (another post) (*) 0. Changes from last posting (*) I. Introduction to alt.sys.amiga.uucp[.patches] II. Introduction to AmigaUUCP (*) III. Principal utilities IV. Constructing mail addresses V. Using DCRON VI. US domain clarification FAQ.2 (this article) (*) VII. Common problems (new, please submit things to go in here). VIII. Using SENDMAIL directly. (*) IX. Other UUCP utilities. (*) X. How to get UUCP stuff ? (*) XI. BBS software supporting UUCP. (*) XII. Other UUCP implementations for AmigaOS. (*) XIII. Unresolved topics. (0) RECENT CHANGES TO THIS FILE (PART 2) Changes are listed below. Too much to list. From mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us (VII) COMMON PROBLEMS Batch news, yes but how ? [Autobatch entry in UULIB:Config] if you add the config line (UULIB:CONFIG) "autobatch autobatch", news article will be compressed separately at each posting. You will end up with a lot of files in UUSPOOL:, decreasing throughoutput. However if you don't post a lot of articles, this can be interesting (you don't need to deal with DCRON or nasty uucico options.) If you only poll another site, it would perhaps be more efficient to use the pre-batching capability of uucico (uucico -b). This will batch all posted articles in one file (if possible) and then call the specified host. If you have downsites (if you feed other sites that calls you), you could also set up a "BatchNews" entry in S:Crontab (if you use DCRON) to pre-batch news before calling hours. Don't specify -b in UULIB:Passwd, because then the other uucico would have to wait (and possibly time-out) while online paying taxes. The only situation you want to add the "Autobatch autobatch" config line to UULIB:CONFIG is when you don't know a lot about DCRON, you don't post a lot of articles and you don't have sites that you feed. More information, see UUMAN:Batchnews, UUMAN:UUCICO, UUMAN:CONFIG. RNews uses hardlinks. How to prevent it ? Under the 2.0 operating system, RNews uses hardlinks to prevent cross-posted article to use n times the space on the harddisk. However, some utilities do not like very well hardlinks. It is then possible to disable hardlinks with the following change to UULIB:Config: RNEWS UUCP:C/RNEWS -h WARNING! Hardlinks to directories are buggy with ALL releases of the Operating System (V37-V39). Harlinks to files are also buggy under OFS and DCFS. Hardlinks should be turned off if not under FFS as shown above. The UULIB:SEQ field. The UULIB:SEQ fields is used to assign unique id's to files in the spool directory and to messages/articles sent out. Note that some news and mail systems (not AmigaUUCP) uses the ID's to prevent newsloops/mailloops. If you clear (or restore from a backup) the UULIB:SEQ, you should set it to a high value (or more than the last number it was) so your message are not getting filtered. UUencode problems. If you edit a mail and insert an uuencoded file, you may have problems if the editor changes spaces to tabs. With DME, you simply set this option to off ("savetabs off"). If you don't the file won't uu-decodable. By the way the syntax for uuencode, if you want to uuencode file "test.lha" is something like uuencode <test.lha >test.lha.uu test.lha The "test.lha.uu" file is the one to insert in your mail/news. Some NEWS utilities allow automatic posting of binaries (GRN). UUCICO G protocol. UUCico 1.16a and 1.15c implement also a "G" protocol besides the normal "g" protocol: If you poll one of these UNIX sites which support the 'G' protocol you have to force your own uucico to first try to use 'G' instead of 'g' when asking for the supported protocolls at connection startup. To do this, poll with $ uupoll ... "-u -pG" ... or $ uucico ... -pG ... Note that I couldn't test this. There are a LOT more infos in the UUCP.internal FAQ, especially about other UUCP protocols. Trimnews New trimnews have been implemented, last is version 04, which supports new OS2.04 ExAll() calls which diminush the risk of a partition being trashed when deleting articles. It also offers trimming by hours rather than day and ALL trimming. It can be found on FTP/BMS/UUCP/FSP sites. Multiple UUCICOs versions. A lot of changes have been made on native UUCICO, and most of them in an uncontrolled way. When you specify a UUCICO version, you should also give the size of the file. The latest UUCICO is known to be: --p-rwxd 1 53372 02-Jun-94 11:43:32 uucico 53372 bytes (105 blocks, 1 items Ram Disk: > uident uucp:c/uucico uucp:c/uucico @($)sysdep.c V1.17-beta.03 Jun 02 1994 uucp:c/uucico @($)uucico.c V1.17-beta.30 Jun 02 1994 From AmigaUUCP version 1.17b4 or 1.17b5. Problems with newsloops due to Path-naming. Suppose your newssite is called "foo". However, for an unknown reason, for example adminstration, it puts on the "Path" something like "foo.bar" or "bar" or "bar.edu". You will then have looping problems. The solution is to add the following entry to your sys file, replacing foo:* by foo:foo.bar:bar:bar.edu:* Augmenting throughoutput. The UUCP protocol, because it is a "send-ack-send" protocol, which needs an acknowledge of each packets before resuming sending, may be very slow. The following are some ideas to augment throughoutput. a) Try to augment the window size. The window size is the amount of packets that may have been sent without being ack'ed in return. The bigger the better. Usually, 7 is OK. You set it via the -n uucico parameter (e.g. -n7). However some implementations of your feed's UUCP software will not allow above 3 (e.g. SYSV Basic Networking Utilities). b) Try to augment the packet size. It is how much data are being sent in one packet. This is done via the -P uucico keyword. For example -P5 selects 512 bytes packets. c) Try to batch news in bigger packets. Avoid the "autobatch autobatch" configuration line in UULIB:CONFIG. Only batch once just before the outgoing call (for example use the -b switch for uucico). d) Try to batch mail. Ask your feed if he can use BSMTP on both sides. This will diminush the number of small files to transmit. e) In some case SUPPRESSING any error correction *AND* data compression protocol may decrease response time and increase throughoutput. Measures have been done concluding that it should be tested if your feed cannot do more than 3 windows and 64-bytes packets. If you do not send a lot of small files and can use 7-window packets with big size, usually disabling data compression and error correction may not be needed nor useful. In general, you should TRY and figure out if anything helps. There is no universal solution to such problems. Don't use tabs inside configuration files A lot of problems have been reported with using TABs in your configuration files. For example, the BSMTP package written in Arexx does not accept any TABs in UULIB:Config. Also it has been reported that Batchnews will not understand a TAB in UULIB:L.Sys between the name of the node and "Any". This will result in no batching for the specified site. Beware that some editors will compress spaces into tabs. To force saving TAB to spaces use "savetabs on" in DME. This, according to Michael B. SMITH <mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us>, is no longer true with 1.17b4. Using the mail/newssystem with "detaching" editors. Most of AmigaUUCP software when calling external editors relies on the fact that the editor will only return control when the user has either cancelled (ie not changed the original edit file), or created a message (ie changed the oroginal edit file). DNEWS, GRn, DMAIL, and other software detect the cancel/ok condition from the length/modification date of the file. If it was not modified, then nothing is to be sent. Of course if the editor detaches itself it will prevent this mechanism from correctly working. The only solution is to force the editor not to return immediately. For example, with CED (CygnusEditor, commercial), you have to add Editor "CED -keepio" to your config file. All news are stored in the JUNK directory. Edit the UULIB:Newsgroups file, there must be a line with the newsgroup name (in . notation), a space/tab and the expiration delay My news partition is growing, nothing seems to be deleted. You have to either use cron to automatically run trimnews at specified times, or run trimnnews by hand. trimnews -all will delete all news. You should redirect the output to NIL: if you use it interactively (it will execute faster). Don't forget to use ONLY the latest version of trimnews. Some of them did awful things. Remember that a newspartition must be on a FFS disk. Using DCFS or other filesystems may create problemes due to bugs in the OS. My machine name is 'testa', but the world knows me as 'test.com'. Add the following to UULIB:Domain: 'test.com MD UU testa', and add Reply-To: to your messages (or use testa.test.com). I want to prevent the news to go to siteb if they come from sitea and vice-versa. If your feeds are sitea and siteb, update your UULIB:Sys config to: sitea:siteb:comp.sys.amiga.* siteb:sitea:comp.sys.amiga.* I keep getting 'Received x expected y' messages while uucico'ing. Use hardware flow control, minimize other tasks running, augment uucico priority or buy a faster Amiga. These messages mean the two uucico speaking to each other are out of sync. This is not fatal, and will be recovered automatically by the protocol. (VIII) USING SENDMAIL DIRECTLY In many cases you will want to have scripts run from dcron to send automated postings, mailings, or do other automated tasks such as backups. Usually bookeeping is made a lot easier if you have these script files send you local mail containing the results of their actions (such as log files or a success/failure message). The easiest way to send a message to yourself from a script is to use the sendmail program. Please refer to the manual page for more information. Essentially there are two ways to do this depending on the type of message you want to send: If you wish to send a simple message to yourself and include some sort of generated log file which is not formatted mail (i.e. has no headers), you can specify various headers through options to sendmail and also include the -raw option. sendmail -raw -f cron -t dillon -s "backups completed" <t:logfile On the otherhand, if you have some sort of monthly posting, such as this FAQ sheet, and want to send it automatically, and the file IS formatted mail (has normal mail headers such as 'From:' and 'To:' and 'Subject:') you can use the following: sendmail <mail_file Since the headers are in the file, no other command line options are necessary, though you can effectively ADD additional recipients through appropriate command line options. (IX) OTHER UUCP UTILITIES. 1. Other crons. There are to my knowledge 3 crons available: DCRON AmiCron (fish disk) CyberCron (later fish disk) This one is 2.0 only and has special features like "at" command, and resembles a lot the UNIX cron. TPTCron from the DLG Pro package (however has been released for public use) 2. Logging in remotely. Since 1.15, the following method can be used to log in remotely. It is very stable and allows for custom AmigaShell scripts. You NEED LIBS:fifo.library & L:fifo-handler (latest version if possible, which is 37.5, included with AmigaUUCP 1.17b4) Note that fifo-handler, although it is a DOS handler, *cannot* be mounted. You have to RUN it. Eg in your S:user-startup (or S:Startup-Sequence under 1.3) you have to add RUN <NIL: >NIL: L:Fifo-Handler Now you have two possibilities: a) You want an user with full shell access. Set up the following line in your UULIB:Passwd file: sysop,sysop_password,1,1,(Sysop Shell Login),RAM:,* Drawback: The Ctrl-C and Ctrl-D signals are not passed. By the way, More does not work (FIFO: does not support DISK_INFO Console packet used by More to retrieve window information). However most commands do work. Requesters will be disabled automagically by getty. b) You want to launch a script. Note that Getty will not pass Ctrl-C and Ctrl-D, as in a). In this case this is an advantage. Set up the following line in UULIB:Passwd guest,*,2,2,(Guest login),RAM:,*Guest-Startup This is a guest login without password. In S:Guest-Startup you may have the following lines. It won't be stoppable and if it fails there won't be any requesters, and the script won't return to a shell. Echo "Welcome on as a guest" Type MY_DATA:Information EndCLI You may well also create a complete menu system with options. Note that the old method using a Newshell AUX: cannot be used anymore due to Getty new method of locking the serial port. If you do you will get errors. See also "AuxSupport", and AXSH. 3. AXSH AXsh is a multiuser shell with built-in protections. It can be used with UUCP. Users may then send/receive mail & news. Current version is 1.30 (works under 1.3 with arp.library, under 2.0, or under WB 2.1 for localization. It is shareware (US $30), mail to albert@cs.tut.fi for more information. See included information how to install it with UUCP, and the BBS section below. A full-working demo version is available from aminet: util/shell/ and from nic.funet.fi:/pub/amiga/shells/AXsh/. 4. Archiving newsgroups. Archiving newsgroups can be automatically done with the following steps: a) Edit S:CronTab and add the following lines. This will launch a script at 00:30 each day. 30 00 * * * UUArchive-Newsgroups b) Edit UULIB:Sys and add # dummy node(s) for archiving news, will never be batched since not in L.Sys uuarchive:alt.sys.amiga.alphanet,alphanet.* c) Create S:UUArchive-Newsgroups. Note you need an TRASH: assign to some temporary directory. We use LHA as an archiver. We could also first join the article and then LHA them (it would be more efficient). --- cut here --- Echo "UUArchive-Newsgroups(4)" ; What follows to prevent forgetting articles. ; Convert "." format to "/" format (1.16D) ; Does not prevent from being launched twice, however. CD UUNEWS: ; ALPHANET newsgroups IF EXISTS UUSPOOL:BATCH/UUArchive Delete TRASH:#?UUArchive Rename UUSPOOL:BATCH/UUArchive TRASH:_UUArchive ; Needed for batchnews multitasking. ConvertNewsgroup TRASH:_UUArchive TRASH:UUArchive LhA -iTRASH:UUArchive a ARCHIVES:Newsgroups/ALPHANET_NEWSGROUPS EndIF --- cut here --- d) Create S:ConvertNewsgroup which converts "." syntax to "/" syntax as used in UUCP V1.16d and above. Note we use SED (Stream Editor). It can be found on fish disks. Probably the use of the Amiga stream editor "edit" would be possible. --- cut here --- .key source,dest .bra { .ket } Sed < {source} > {dest} -fS:Sed-Newsgroup-Script --- cut here e) Create S:Sed-Newsgroup-Script, which is the SED macro itself --- cut here --- y%.%/% --- cut here --- 5a. MAIL to NEWS Gateway. It is very easy to set up a (working but ugly) Mail to News gateway. For example you want all mail to user "alphanet-general" to be posted automatically on alphanet.general. Simply add the following lines to your UULIB:aliases file : alphanet-general: "|postnews -R UULIB:alphanet-general-refs" Also create the "UULIB:alphanet-general-refs file on the following skeleton: Newsgroups: alphanet.general Distribution: alphanet Sender: alphanet-general@alphanet.ch (Mail to News gateway) This will work easily, but is not always of a pretty sight. Please note that such gatewaying should be limited to your network and never transmitted through news. There are packages which are best suited for that purpose. 5b. NEWS to MAIL Gateway CNEWS users may want to use newsgate/mailgate, posted to .patches some time ago (available at litamiga /pub/amiga/uucp, or at alphanet). Contact the author, wusel@hactar.hanse.de, if you have problems locating a copy. AmigaUUCP 1.16D users should find Newsgate.lha on litamiga.epfl.ch /pub/amiga/uucp directory, or contact its author postmaster@megalith.miami.fl.us. 6. Mail Vacation programs. A mail vacation program is a program that replies automatically to received mail while you are absent. I know of two versions that are available at litamiga, and were posted a while ago on a.s.a.u.patches. Look for MailVacation.lha & vacation.lha. A new vacation program "mwm_vacation.lha", done by Mike Meyer, is also available (just posted on .patches with the "vacation.lha" name) Authors: MailReflect.Rexx, CB@brewhq.swb.de (Christian Balzer) ARexx.Reflector, fgent@gentle.nbg.sub.org (Friedrich Gentner) vacation.rexx, heiner@amross.cpr.sub.org (Heiner Kordewiner) 7. UUPoll UUPoll is a polling server. It supports the following features: - controls the execution of a UUCICO child as the parent part - checks for correct hostname and polling-time violation - controls abortion of UUCICO due to a precalculated restriction time - operates dependendly on status of last session - operates dependendly on (specific) pending work - controls dialup retries due to busy line or other UUCICO failures - controls abortions due to user interupts - can be disabled through a job control feature for crontab interventions - can abort a startup due to or break an already running UUCICO process - can give information about polling times and host status - can setup your modem before start of a polling session - can spawn UUCICO with additional options - can spawn own user command after a (successful) session - full UUCP logfile support similar to UUCICO - can run under full runtime debugging with variable debug level Author: UUPoll R0.68, rse@angle.sub.org (Ralf S. Engelschall) 8. UUTraf UUTraf sums up all xferstat entries of your UUCICO connections and calculates a statistic chart. It can also pack the original log entries into a shorter form which will be also understand by UUTRAF when scanning the xferstat. Basically resembles the UNIX version, but gives more information. Requires UUCICO Release 1.13n, 1.15c or 1.16a. Author: UUTraf R0.15, rse@angle.sub.org (Ralf S. Engelschall) 9. UUAcct UUAcct resembles UUTraf, but gives more accounting-related information (such as last call from node x) Author: UUACCT 1.3, wusel@hactar.hanse.de (Kai 'wusel' Siering) 10. Elm Elm is a more user friendly mailreader, based on its unix equivalent. Last version is 3.0. Shareware $US10. Supports MIME. Author: ELM 3.0, amk@zikzak.in-berlin.de (Andreas M. Krichwitz) 11. GRN GRN is a fully intutionized Newsreader. Works well on flicker-free systems. 2.0 only. By Mike Schwartz, latest releases by Michael B. Smith. It supports NNTP also, on top of Commodore's AS225, or by itself. It does support AmiTCP, DNET, MLink and AUW. 12. BMS BMS stands for Batch Mail Server. It allows to either request files from another node which has BMS installed, or to create a BMS node which will process file requests from other nodes. By Matt Dillon. 13. BSMTP (Batch Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) Normal mail pieces ready for sending via UUCP are stored each in 3 files. One local control file, and two data files (mail is not batched) Moreover, mail is not compressed. If you send a lot of mail, the overhead and the fact mail is not compressed may slow down your connection. You may then choose to go for BSMTP. BSMTP is an additionnal layer on the UUCP system. You continue writing independant files in the UUSPOOL: directory. At a specified (DCRON) time, you run the BSMTP batcher for a specified site, and this will create one batched and compressed file to send to the specified site. Batched means that data all is in one single file. NOTE: The other site MUST have set up his BSMTP system correctly. Ask also for the type of compression (compress-14, compress-16, freeze, none). Best is freeze. To my knowledge there are two packages available (litamiga or Aminet): - A set of ARexx script + modified UUXQT - C executables. - SmailAmiga Authors: BSMTP 0.14 rse@angle.sub.org (Ralf S. Engelschall) BSMTP-ARexx: georg@bluemoon.GUN.de (Georg Sassen) SmailAmiga, see the SmailAmiga subsection. 14. AVM AVM's last version is 1.3.2 and is available on ftp.eunet.ch Author: gstark@misvax.mis.arizona.edu (Gavin Stark). 15. UUXQT L:Commands A special version of the UUXQT executable is available. It allows the launching of more commands than the usual UUXQT. Launchable commands are configurable. This can be used for special needs (BSMTP, ...). Couldn't find the author name. 16. MIME [Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions] Mime is at this time a mail standard. Amiga packages include "metamail-2.3" available by ftp on ftp.eunet.ch mirrors. It is an extension to standard mail message, allowing to pass enhanced text, graphics, audio, and more, in a standardized and interoperable manner. It's far more than just ASCII text. The only News system that is supposed to include something similar is the NeXT NewsGrazer which uses RTF (rich text format). GRn and GMail will probably support MIME in some future releases. The metamail-2.4 port for the Amiga (by Johan Widin) requires a suite of other programs as well (as most Amiga MIME implementation will) to convert the text and graphics formats to things that can be displayed on the Amiga (GIF, TIFF, TeX, etc.) 17. XStat XStat is a traffic analyser for UUCP connections. It allows not only reporting usual figures, but also may be used to calculate real phone costs based on user-settable rates. It needs at least AmigaOS 2.04. Available on Fish 714 (with Modula-2 source). A newer version was distributed in December 1993 (1.14) Author: Juergen Weinelt, jow@rz.uni-wuerzburg.de 18. AuxSupport In order to log in remotely, you may also use the AuxSupport.lzh package (posted a while back) which uses a special aux handler which will work with getty. It also does pass control C,D etc... and includes emacs that works over aux, and AZ (an XPRZmodem util) that allows interactive zmodem transfers while logged in. With this method you do not need fifolibrary nor fifo-handler. Drawback: the sd-aux-handler currently does not work with multi serial line cards, and the newshell command must be done via script that also invokes a wait process to prevent getty from getting back on port until shell exits (examples supplied in archive). Author: Steve Drew, drew@cgou11.enet.dec.com 19. Remote-WShell Could allow you to use WShell remotely. Seems to be based on AuxSupport. Incorporates TNews to read news. I have not registered to WShell so I couldn't test it. 20. ANN Newsreader. Very configurable. Similar to Unix's nn. Author: Walther Mildenberger (wasp@chumly.ka.sub.org) 21. TIN TIN is a threaded (meaning it groups articles by Subject: and References:) and interactive (meaning you move a cursor to the group/article you want to read and type return) newsreader ported from its UNIX version. There is also a special BBS version (e.g. for DLG or similar Bulletin Board Systems). It is distributed with full source code. Latest version, directly compilable on Amiga (SAS/C) is 1.2 PL1. This version does support NNTP. Author: Iain Lea <iain.lea@erlm.siemens.de>, ported to AmigaOS by Mark Tomlinson <mark@garden.equinox.gen.nz>. 22. WPL WPL is a telecomunications interpreted language, in many ways similar to AREXX. It is a grouping of shared libraries, with the main libraries being 'wpl.library' for the main interpreter, 'xferq.library' for address parsing/handling and the outbound list, xpr*.library(xprfts.library, xprzedzap.library,etc) for actual file transfers, and a number of new libraries 'yet to be written' that will allow third party authors to add commands to this language (In much the same way as RXLib'd libraries work for AREXX, only much faster). For more information, join the following mailing lists. wpl-programmer@alfred.ccs.carleton.ca - For the WPL language developers, people writing support utilities or language extensions, protocol authors, language beta testers. wpl-application@alfred.ccs.carleton.ca - For the users of WPL based mailers, the GUI users, etc. This conference will remain as non-technical as we possibly can, and is the place where WPL programmers can support their software. 23. AmigaMail AM (AmigaMail) is a completely Intuition controlled mail user agent for use with AmigaUUCP and AmigaUUCP+. It runs only on OS 2.04 and above, and its goal is to provide a consistent user interface for mails. Note that it is still beta, latest version is AM V1.19beta, installation needs good comprehension of UUCP internals. Author: Christian Riede <chr@senga.ka.sub.org> 24. UUFS UUFS is a file-mailserver. However it seems it has some security leaks. Author: Andrew Koppa & others 25. mpack/munpack mpack is a program for encoding binary files and sending them through the mail and news. The messages it creates follow the MIME (see the MIME section in this FAQ for more information) format outlined in RFCs 1521 and 1522. Being of more recent design, it has several technical advantages over messages containing uuencoded files. It was designed to send binaries through mail and news, and it is easier to use than raw uuencode for posting. munpack is the unpacker that goes with mpack. It has many of the same advantages over uudecode that mpack has over uuencode. The one drawback is that you cannot save all the parts of an mpack posting in one file to be fed to munpack. munpack must be able to distinguish the separate messages from each other in some way. The obvious advantages - not having to save the messages at all, not having to worry about what order you process them in, and being able to process parts from two postings in intermixed order - outweigh this disadvantage. Exactly how you unpack an mpack archive depends on your news reader. The hard - but always possible - way is to save the each part of an mpack message as a separate file and run munpack with those files as arguments. As stated above, you must put each part in a separate file, but order doesn't matter. You can save multiple multipart postings in a directory, cd to that directory and issue the command "munpack `list lformat %p%n`". If your newsreader supports MIME format messages, it may decode and unpack mpacked files without any action on your part, or it may require you to issue a command to process each part as a MIME message. If it does not support MIME format messages, the easiest way to unpack mpacked files is to arrange to run munpack on each message from inside your newsreader. Details of how this is done depend on your newsreader. The central release mechanism for mpack and munpack is FTP from export.acs.cmu.edu, in the directory pub/mpack. This directory has MS-DOS, Mac and Amiga binaries, as well as sources for those and the Unix version. Amiga-specific distributions are also available via BMS from various sites, including contessa.phone.net and adastra.cvl.va.us. If none of those work, the maintainer of the Amiga version can be contacted via email to mwm@contessa.phone.net, and will send you a uuencoded version of munpack. 26. SmailAmiga (V2.5) This is a port from aussem@mavhh.hanse.de of the popular SMAIL UNIX mailer, including BSMTP. It is a full replacement for the original sendmail, mainly useful for gateway-site Amigas. It is available on Aminet. 27. Monalisa (1.0a) This software is shareware and implements a full FIDONET to UUCP gateway. Author: eric@desert.wlink.nl (X) HOW TO GET UUCP STUFF. 1. UUCP Patches FTP sites. The litamiga.epfl.ch:/pub/amiga/uucp directory is expected to contain all stuff posted in alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches. Please allow some delay from the time things are posted on alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches to the time they are available on litamiga. [128.178.151.32] The litamiga FSP daemon is on disun3.epfl.ch at port 9999. There is also an IRC client called ALPHABot. **NOTE** litamiga.epfl.ch is available from 1800 to 0900 GMT+2 Aminet: The ftp.eunet.ch mirrors (of which litamiga is) also have most of UUCP stuff. (/pub/aminet/comm/uucp) 2. Public UUCP sites. Site name: alphanet.ch Login: nuucp (changed) Phone number: +41 38 41 40 81 (changed) Country: Switzerland Modem norms: up to V32bis MNP/V42bis Calling hours: 24 hour a day. Contents-file: ~/archives/README ~/ls-laR.gz Notes: alphanet.ch is a UNIX system (mips.alphanet.ch), and archives alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches. It also has some aminet files. There are also Aminet files. Date of entry: Sat, 28 August 1993 11:00:04 CED Site name: hactar.hanse.de Login: nuucp Password: nuucp Phone number: +49 40 550 35 49 Country: West Germany Modem norms: up to V32bis MNP/V42bis Calling hours: 21:00-10:00 UTC Contents-file: UUPUB:Contents(.Z|.F|.lha) Notes: Get `~/$readme.1st` the first time you call. Running BMS and a mailserver, mailserv@hactar.hanse.de Date of entry: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 23:51:39 +0200 3. BMS sites Generally the file to get is BMS:PUB/FILES. Site address: adastra.cvl.va.us Restrictions: none Notes: UUCP sources and binaries. Site address: brewey.cts.com Restrictions: None known. Notes: None. Site address: hactar.hanse.de Restrictions: None (yet). But make SURE you ARE reachable before getting large files !! Notes: UUCP sources and binaries. AmigaUUCP Plus. Refer to BMS:pub/Files Site address: anaconda.bloomington.in.us Restrictions: None Notes: Most files were lost in a disk crash. Some will be restored. Probably only the UUCP system will remain downloadable. BBS is +1 812 332 7379 (V32bis/V42bis) (Fido also) Site address: brunz.Santa-Cruz.CA.US Restrictions: None known. Notes: None *** DOWN *** Site address: haadav.boston.ma.us Restrictions: None known. Notes: 14400 baud connection. Site address: moose.cs.indiana.edu!dolmen Restrictions: None known. Notes: None Site address: uunet.uu.net!decvax!ftlcpu Restrictions: None known. Notes: UUCP Patches. Site address: seq.uncwil.edu!marin Restrictions: None known. Notes: Contains UUCP sources and binaries for AmigaOS, MacOS, and MS-DOS. Site address: dacami.cmhnet.org Restrictions: None known. Notes: ??? Site address: alphanet.ch ###### NOT AVAILABLE NOW ###### Restrictions: System is not available for BMS. Please contact schaefer@di.epfl.ch for mail exchanges. Site address: mirkwood.cam.org Restrictions: None known. Notes: BETTY server. (see paragraph 4) Site address: peti.GUN.de Restrictions: none Notes: Holds the latest versions of all programs Peter Simons is responsible for (eg AGetty, PMAIL, PGP, UUCP library project) System administrator is Peter Simons <simons@peti.GUN.de> 4. BETTY Betty is an automatic "archie"-like system for BMS servers. It maintains a list of known BMS sites and their files. You can even request a server's list or find a program on a server via this method. Betty maintains a database that lists all the files available on some BMS sites. To consult the Betty database, you send a mail message to the server describing what you are looking for. The server will reply your message with the results of the query. Here is an example: To: betty@mirkwood.cam.org Subject: prog commodity quit And the reply would contain: From: nobody@mirkwood.cam.org To: hebrais@mirkwood.cam.org Subject: Betty [ ... ] Matches on deepthot.cary.nc.us: File:DOS2.0/ FBLANK.LZH 26509 28-Sep-91 01:52:44 : SCN BLNK USING FRACTALS - COMMODITY Matches on mirkwood.cam.org: PUB:utilities/system/workbench/ KCommodity.lha 218914 14-Jun-92 11:17:58 [ ... ] Betty understands a number of commands. To get the HELP file, send a mail message to "betty@mirkwood.cam.org" with the word "help" in the subject line. You may contact the maintainer of Betty at "betty-request@mirkwood.cam.org". 5. FSP sites Try disun3.epfl.ch at port 9999, in subdirectory uucp. 6. Mailservers for getting the UUCP FAQ (this FAQ) mail to fileserver@caron.ati.com request format xsend auucp_faq.txt bms to caron.ati.com request files:auucp_faq.txt (XI) BBS SOFTWARE SUPPORTING UUCP Most BBS software support FIDONET, most do not support UUCP directly. That means that often they need to import news and mail, thus using precious diskspace. Moreover they often do not translate news format correctly, or have problems with mails. If the BBS does only support FIDONET, a special package called UNETGATE (or something similar) can be used to translate news & mail into FIDONET echomail & netmail. Or when it is possible to run external programs ('Doors'), one can use Tin for reading news. 1. DLG State: COMMERCIAL Contact: *no idea* UUCP: News and mail are being imported to DLG internal mail and news format, which is more a FIDONET derivate. This means that users have to see ugly newsheaders, and some of the features of the newssystem are lost. After an import, it's a good idea to do a trimnews -all to remove dupes. News are expired not on a time basis but rather on an amount per area basis. However when posting an article, the underlying UUCP system is used to post directly mail & news. Doors: There is a special version of TIN (dlgtin.lha) usable as a 'door' 2. AXsh 1.3 State: Shareware, with a full-working demo version available on Aminet and nic.funet.fi. Registration is US$30 Contact: Pasi 'Albert' Ojala <albert@cs.tut.fi> UUCP: AXsh is infact "simply" a shell. Custom scripts and commands may be installed by the operator. The standard version includes a readnews program which reads UUCP and CNews news directly. So you need UUCP or CNEWS as the transport layer for mail and news if you don't talk with another AXsh BBS (if yes, transport is assured by zmodem and lha). It uses a special AUX handler which passes signals (C-D-E-F) and allows XPR filetransfers. An interesting utility is the FFE program which allows to browse through directories and select the file(s) you want to download. AXSH can be used with any serial device driver or unit number, and shared mode is available, along with handshake settings, speed an carrier detection. Examples and tested settings are included. Doors: Almost full CLI/Shell support. 3. 4D-BBS V2.x+ State: Shareware, with a full-working demo version available on Aminet and many BBS/Commercial services. Registration is US $49.95 with educational and competetive upgrades available. Contact: Dale E. Reed Jr. <daler@crnstn.spk.wa.us> UUCP: 4D-BBS directly reads and writes native news message store formats, so no importing/exporting is needed. It presents this is the SAME format as mail and other network messages offering the user the same frontend, no matter which network the message is from/to. The AmigaUUCP package is needed in order to support news/mail over UUCP. 4D-BBS uses sendmail and postnews to actually write the messages out to the network, allowing a seamlesses integration. News is setup on either a time expire or on an amount limit configurable by the SysOp. Doors: In the works in a full featured news and mail reading door, along with a qwk packer/reader which allows both mail and news to be read and replied to off-line. 4. Perfect Link State: Commercial Contact: aberney@alphanet.ch UUCP: Amiga-UUCP 1.16 and up Doors: Direct access, REXX scripts and P-Link doors. You cannot, however, launch tin or elm. The system comes with Arexx scripts for mail & news. 5. CNET State: Commercial, US$229 for latest version (3.05c) Contact: Perspective Software (Jim SELLECK) UUCP: Cnet comes with import and export uunews/uumail programs. Contrary to other BBS doing importation, it is only done on a header basis (the original file is still referenced). AmigaUUCP is required as the UUCP transport (and processing) layer. Incorporates a QWK sub-system. Doors: Tin and usual AmigaUUCP shell utilities. The sysop can also use AmigaUUCP CLI software from the BBS. (XII) OTHER UUCP IMPLEMENTATIONS FOR AMIGAOS. This sections lists known UUCP implementations for AmigaOS: 1. AmigaUUCP, by Matt Dillon and others. Latest version is 1.17beta4 2. wUUCP by Kai 'wusel' Siering <wusel@3jean.hanse.de>. (XIII) UNRESOLVED TOPICS. - More BBS software. - CNET and PLINK info. EOF = END OF FAQ :-)