earlw@pesnta.UUCP (Earl Wallace ) (04/01/85)
Well, I have my 5.2 uucp working and so far its looks ok. I don't know if
I want to tell you what I had to do to get it running because its depressing.
I wish I could understand why AT&T after 15 years, has failed to make the
standard distribution uucp work with a damm. If I really didn't need it, I
would have tossed the uucp in the trash (its that bad...). Of course, how
much easier the job would have been under 5.2 instead of Version 7, I don't
know. Much of the uucp code just plain *stinks*. I wonder if AT&T wanted to
make the "standard" 5.2 uucp really rotten so you would pay the $5,000 for
the honey danber uucp? Nah! No one would do that! ;-)
5.2 uucp bad code, example #1:
The way it was: The program calls the system()
library call to do the work of a "standard" 2 call.
strcpy(cmd, "chmod 600 ");
strcat(cmd, ttyname(fd));
system(cmd);
The way it is now: We use the chmod() system call which is in every
Unix system I know of.
chmod(ttyname(fd), 0600);
5.2 uucp bad code, example #2:
The way it was: This code would always return "uucp" since was
the first login name in the passwd file for the
uid.
/* determine the user who just logged in */
guinfo( getuid(), User, msg);
strcpy(Loginuser, User);
The way it is now: We use getlogin() to find the "true" user
login name. The callcheck() function was
blowing up because of the wrong input data about
the user; causing "BAD LOGIN/MACHINE NAME" errors.
/* determine the user who just logged in */
guinfo( getuid(), User, msg);
if ( (p=getlogin()) )
strcpy(Loginuser, p);
else
strcpy(Loginuser, User);
The above examples are but a few of the problems I have found in the standard
5.2 uucp from AT&T, when you get your XELOS tapes, check out the uucp. If it
works well, thank some poor slob at P-E because he/she did some work to get it
running...
The 8/32 comm machine is having a nightmare and we decided to put it to rest.
Next week a 3220 comes rolling in and that will be the comm machine. It will
have 1 megabyte instead of the 1/2 megabyte of the 8/32. The 3220 is a very
solid machine and will give little trouble (if any). This 5.2 uucp will
be running on it. I really want you all to have a dedicated machine that is
not going up and down.... Please have patience... I am working almost around
the clock to make the uucp network reliable and fast.
When I catch up with my work, I'll see what we can do about Xelos bug reports
on the net. Please don't expect fixes since I don't have all *that* much
time...
-earlw
--
Earl Wallace
UUCP: ..!{ihnp4, ucbvax!hplabs, ucbvax!twg}!pesnta!earlw
PHONE: (408) 727-5540 x230
USMAIL: Perkin-Elmer Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. 95054