uuxqt and remote mail

[Jan Purchase]

A colleague and I have been trying to setup a uucp connection between
our A/UX (2.0.1) systems and are having serious and unexpected
problems. I know that many people out there have got A/UX UUCP to work
and I would really appreciate some tips.

We have followed all the instructions in the A/UX manual and have
achieved successful file transfers using uuto and uucp. However, we
seem unable to persuade uux, remote email, or indeed any function which
relies on uuxqt, to work at all. In all cases, uuxqt refuses to execute
the command as if the originator of the command were not authorized.
All commands whether they are listed in /usr/lib/uucp/L.cmds or not
are refused. The same error message occurs even if a rubbish command
(i.e. zzzzzz) is requested by uux.

In each case the /usr/spool/uucp/LOGFILE is something like:

-------------------------------
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:31) (C,21296,0) OK (startup)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:33) (C,21296,0) REQUESTED (S D.heimdaBC0039 D.heimdaBC0039 jpearce)
mickey!jpearce (6/16-16:46:33) (C,21296,0) temp file created (/usr/spool/uucp/TM.21296.000)
mickey!jpearce (6/16-16:46:33) (C,21296,0) Temp file stored (/usr/spool/uucp/TM.21296.000)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:40) (C,21296,1) REQUESTED (S D.mickeyXA0039 X.mickeyXA0039 jpearce)
mickey!jpearce (6/16-16:46:40) (C,21296,1) temp file created (/usr/spool/uucp/TM.21296.001)
mickey!jpearce (6/16-16:46:40) (C,21296,1) Temp file stored (/usr/spool/uucp/TM.21296.001)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:45) (C,21296,2) C.mickey (bldfl)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:45) (C,21296,2) C.mickey (bldfl)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:45) (C,21296,2) REQUEST (S D.heimdaXA0039 X.heimdaXA0039 uucp)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:45) (C,21296,2) REQUEST (S D.heimdaXA0039 X.heimdaXA0039 uucp - D.heimdaXA0039 0666)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:47) (C,21296,3) file removed in cntrl.c (D.heimdaXA0039)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:50) (C,21296,3) C.mickey (bldfl)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:51) (C,21296,3) OK (conversation complete  tty0 32)
mickey!uucp (6/16-16:46:54) (Q,21303,0) jpearce XQT DENIED (rmail purchase )
mickey!Umickey (6/16-16:47:01) (X,21310,0) XQT QUE'D (rmail jpearce )
-------------------------------

i.e. the file transfer succeeds, but remote commands (rmail, who, ps)
fail. Debugging output from uuxqt is always something like:

-------------------------------
** START **
User - uucp
process
file - .
file - ..
file - .XQTDIR
file - LOGDEL
file - LCK..tty1
file - SYSLOG
file - LCK.XQT
file - AUDIT
file - Log-WEEK
file - LOGFILE
file - D.heimdaBC0036
file - X.mickeyXA0036
Z

U jpearce mickey

F D.heimdaBC0036

I D.heimdaBC0036

C rmail pearce

xfile - X.mickeyXA0036
chkpth failure - u=0
badfile - in: /usr/spool/uucp/D.heimdaBC0036
fin - /usr/spool/uucp/D.heimdaBC0036, fout - /dev/null, sysout - heimdall, user
- jpearce
cmd - rmail pearce
cmd = rmail
bad command
-------------------------------

Could someone explain what chkpth failure is? Or badfile and bad
command?

Experiments have shown us that the chkpath failure is the real
problem. When trivial commands are queued with uux
(i.e. uux mickey!who ) uuxqt behaves normally. However if an attempt is
made to redirect the output of who to a file; uuxqt again reports a
chkpth failure. 

Hearing of uuxqt's problems with PATH and TZ, I wrote a wrapper shell
script to set these environment variables up properly for the command
- but it makes no difference. uuxqt is not interested in executing any
command involving files, whether it is in L.cmds or not and it always
fails as shown above.

I have checked that all the uucp configuration files exist, have the
correct permissions and contain the required information.  FWDFILE and
ORIGFILE both contain the name of the remote system (mickey), USERFILE
has the line:

	Umickey,mickey	/usr/spool/uucppublic

Any ideas where we are going wrong? We could really use some help on this one.

Cheers
Jan.