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Annotation of researchv10no/cmd/netnews/uucp/README, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: This directory contains a number of modifications to UUCP that
                      2: are useful for news.  Only the minus.z mod is really crucial,
                      3: the others are there primarily to boost performance so as to
                      4: cut down on the load on your machine.  There are many other
                      5: mods to UUCP kicking around - many bug fixes and security improvements.
                      6: Watch net.bugs.uucp for these.  One large mod that is very useful
                      7: is the Duke uudir mod, which puts files in SPOOL into subdirectories.
                      8: This mod is very much a kludge, and it certainly could be done
                      9: better, but until a wonderful version is made available, substantial
                     10: performance gains can be attained.  (Since scanning a UNIX directory
                     11: is quadratic on the size of the directory, the 5-fold reduction in
                     12: directory size from uudir can result in a factor of 25 improvement
                     13: in disk utilization.)  uudir is easy to install in any UUCP, but
                     14: it contains some assembly language code, which has been written
                     15: only for the VAX and PDP-11.  All these changes are transparent to
                     16: your UUCP neighbors - you can still talk to UUCP's that don't have
                     17: these mods made - you can even exchange news with older systems.
                     18: (Batching, with or without the =batch mod, requires at least a 2.10
                     19: news system on the other end.)
                     20: 
                     21: minus.z.5 
                     22: minux.z.v7 
                     23:        This mod implements the -z and -n options to uux.  These
                     24:        prevent uuxqt from mailing back annoying little messages to
                     25:        whoever happened to start up the uucico daemon telling them
                     26:        that the rnews command executed OK.  -z says "only send a message
                     27:        if the rnews command bombed out", -n says "never send one".
                     28:        -z is recommended.  In order for your users not to be bombarded
                     29:        with these messages, all your USENET neighbors must install this.
                     30:        "5" is for System V and UNIX 5.0, "v7" is for V7 and 4BSD.
                     31: cpu.speedup 
                     32:        A simple fix to V7 and 4BSD UUCP to keep uicico from eating up
                     33:        all the CPU time on your system when receiving files.  Highly
                     34:        recommended, especially if all your traffic is at 2400 baud
                     35:        or slower.
                     36: uux.minus.c 
                     37:        A mod to uux.c to support a uux -c option, e.g.
                     38:                uux -c yoursys!rnews '<' /usr/spool/news/net/news/123
                     39:        which prevents uux from making a separate copy of each article
                     40:        in the spool directory for each system.
                     41: =batch 
                     42:        Code to allow commands such as
                     43:        uux -c yoursys!rnews '<' =/usr/lib/news/batch_/usr/spool/batch/yoursys
                     44:        so that, once the connection is fired up and ready to transfer the
                     45:        file, the command "/usr/lib/news/batch /usr/spool/batch/yoursys"
                     46:        will be started up, and its output copied to the other system.
                     47:        The advantage here is that batching is possible without keeping
                     48:        a full copy of the news on spool waiting for a connection to
                     49:        be established.  This can be a big win if the other system is
                     50:        down for any length of time.  It does not good without the
                     51:        uux.minus.c mod below.  Beware of security issues - they have
                     52:        not been carefully addressed here, and this mod opens up some
                     53:        potential security holes.  It only allows one command to
                     54:        be fired up, and batch should check that the file of names
                     55:        is in a safe directory (not /usr/lib/uucp/L.sys or /etc/passwd).
                     56:        Ideally batch should be suid, since the command will run as uucp.

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