USENIX Board Studies UUCP

[Mark Keating]

    With the current discussions of what an New UUCP should be and how
it should be controlled distributed etc..., the topic seems to have
diverged to a discussion of what low level transport is better for what
type of lines etc... While this is an important part of UUCP, it seems
to me that UUCP more importantly is a store and foreward facility for a
variety of transports and communications methods.

    What I would really like to see is a UUCP that was modular so that
various transport protocols could easily be added in as seperate
functions, and were called as seperate processes. What I'm really asking
for is that the core Unix part, and the various physical interfaces
of UUCP be seperated, and connect them by having UUCP simply call them.

    This would require that a calling convention and status return be
defined for the transport and could allow for adding in "ANY" type of
transport, without the need to access or change the source. This would
allow for a basic UUCP 'g' to be supplied as the basic initial protocol,
and provide a minimum functional product, and allow for the independant
testing and implementation of other protocols. Then protocols could be
developed and distributed as independant modules that would link to UUCP
by their name.

    With the different communications methods available (V.32,
Trailblazer, X.25, Networks, ISDN etc...), I think it unlikley that
there will be ONE that does everything best, and more likey that several
will be required. With the facility to easily integrate and test new
ones, the race for the best protocol would be on (and may the best
protocol win :-) ).

    The same thing should be done with dialers where it should be
possible to replace the send-expect functions with a more capable and
flexible program or even simple shell script.  If a dialer as an
executable could be called then much better dialer functions could be
developed and distributed independantly as well. As modems get more
complex like the trailblazers with gobs of registers that do all kinds
of things and different models with different capabilities, this type
individual control would allow much more intelligent control of the
devices. The same thing goes for networks ISDN or whatever else may
be required to establish a link.

    I really think that the functional aspects of UUCP and the physical
interface be seperated, and that the main area of concern at this point
should be the administration and operational and generic Unix aspects of
UUCP. With the physical and logical sides of UUCP seperated a better
effort could be applied to provide enhanced support facilities and
things a like window based administration (windows meaning either simple
character based with curses, or X/GUI), monitoring like the uustatus
program by Edwin Carp etc.., while allowing individual efforts to deal
with different protocols, that could be easily distributed as single
stand alone modules.

    While I may be off on the exact proper split, the point here is that
"IF" it is possible to create a version of UUCP that is modular and open
ended, that a open ended core be produced that would allow the simple
addition of any require physical interfacing or transports required. It
seems reasonable to me that a solid core and well done Unix part of
UUCP, would allow better control and portability of that section, while
leaving it completely open ended now and in the future.


flames welcome, comments too. ( I've probably asked for it now.  :-) )

PS:  while Henry's suggestion of VVCP is kind of natural, the UU is
     for Unix to Unix, and I'd hate to lose that part of it, how about
     UUUCP, then as we add more U's we could go to scientific notation. :-)