uuxqt problem (was Re: TZ/rmail problems again)

[Alexis Rosen]

This is a followup to an article from almost a month ago. Sorry it took so
long- I was in Europe.

mann at intacc.uucp (Jeff Mann) writes:
>alexis at panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>>Jeff Mann writes about continued problems with TZ and uuxqt, showing a trace
>>of a sessionin my wrapper where one uuxqt fails and the next succeeds.
>>
>>This is really weird. Time to start looking for the _really_ stupid stuff,
>>because not much else seems left. Try putting "echo $TZ 1>&2" right before
>>the line in the wrapper that calls uuxqt- it is possible that TZ is getting
>>reset within the script? (Yes, I know that's stupid... but like I said...)
>
>Not so stupid, really.  I did put an "echo TZ" into the log, and guess
>what?  The uuxqt wrapper itself was being called with TZ unset.  (The
>example log I gave might have given the impression that the one uuxqt
>that worked and another that failed were from the same invocation of the
>uuxqt wrapper - they weren't).  I don't know why or how it was called
>with TZ unset at this point, because it is always exec'ed from uucico,
>and all my scripts (uushell, demons, etc.) have TZ set.  One thing I
>just noticed is that your wrapper script doesn't set TZ!  I guess I had
>just assumed that it did, and one of your postings also implied this.
>
>So why is TZ not set? Looking back through my files, I found:
>
>>Since uucp doesn't see much difference between calling and being called, the
>>most likely thing is that uushell is screwy. Not surprising. The original looks
>>like this:
>>env "TZ=`/bin/cat /etc/TIMEZONE`" /usr/lib/uucp/uucico
>>This is because the uucico is very very stupid and won't work without TZ being
>>set properly. This caused us incredible amounts of grief when we were getting
>>started. Try changing it to read
>>env "TZ=EST5EDT" /usr/lib/uucp/uucico
>>instead. (Since you're in New Jersey. Otherwise, use the right zone...)
>
>I'm afraid I don't quite understand the reasoning for this - why doesn't
>TZ=`/bin/cat /etc/TIMEZONE` work if you have /etc/TIMEZONE configured?
>Is this the cause of my problem?  At any rate, I've put TZ=EST5EDT in
>the uuxqt wrapper and it's fixed.

It does, now, I think. But at one point it was badly broken. You can
probably put the /bin/cat etc. back in uushell and uudemon.day and have
it work now.

As for why I didn't put that in the wrapper- it wasn't ever a problem. If you
really want to do things right instead of brute-forcing it (but who has the
time...) you should instead have uuxqt.wrap inform you each time it's called
without TZ set right. Then you can trace the real problem...

Anyway, I'm just glad things are finally fixed for you. This was a real puzzle.

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis