uuxqt and remote mail

[Jeff Mann]

In article <1636 at ucl-cs.uucp> J.Purchase at cs.ucl.ac.uk (Jan Purchase) writes:
>
>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.

I had the same problem, with the same error reports from checkpth.  I
*think* uuxqt seems to have a problem with the username of the person
who generated the uucico on the remote site not having an entry in the
USERFILE.  I don't think it should care; it should only care about the
username of the uucp process that logs in.

>ORIGFILE both contain the name of the remote system (mickey), USERFILE
>has the line:
>
>	Umickey,mickey	/usr/spool/uucppublic
>

This is what I tracked it down to, although I'm not sure that I can explain
it fully. To quote the UNIX Administration Guide for System V,
(Thomas/Farrow, Prentice Hall): "...understanding the USERFILE is probably
one of the most difficult parts about the UUCP system."

In fact, I really don't want to understand it any more than I do right now,
which isn't very much. All I know is that putting TWO "unknown" entries at
the end of the USERFILE instead of one, seems to work. It's probably some
kind of security risk, but who cares, it only gives people access to your
public directory anyways.

u_telly,telly /usr/spool/uucppublic
uumnetor,mnetor /usr/spool/uucppublic
nuucp, /usr/spool/uucppublic
, /usr/spool/uucppublic
, /usr/spool/uucppublic

I'd really prefer to know what's going on, but I don't have the time to
figure it out right now, and this method works for me. If someone else
can post a better explanation or solution, please do.

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