No Passwd for nuucp

[Greg A. Woods]

In article <1990Oct22.211639.14436 at mccc.uucp> pjh at mccc.uucp (Pete Holsberg) writes:
> I'd like to have nuucp with no passwd for anonymous uucp possibilities
> but my SV/386 R3.2.2 insists on asking nuucp to choose a password!  How
> can I convince UNIX that nuucp doesn't need a password?

Don't use sysadm (or face) to install new users, especially system type
accounts.  Actually that's a little one-sided, but I never trust these
fancy system admin. type things!  :-)

Login as root, make sure no-one else is using the system (at least
make sure they don't run passwd, or chsh, etc.), and edit /etc/passwd.
Add a new line for nuucp, with a home directory of /usr/spool/uucppublic
and a shell of /usr/lib/uucp/uucico.  Make the password field blank,
and choose a unique user-id, and unique group-id (if you don't already
have a uulogins (or something similar) group.  Don't use the same
user-id or group as uucp.

Eg: from /etc/passwd:
	nuucp::20:20:Anonymous UUCP:/usr/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/uucico
and from /etc/group:
	uulogins:x:20:root,adm,sysadm,uucp

If you are using shadow passwords, put an 'x' in the password field.
There is a command that will update the /etc/shadow file with the new
account.

If you already have an nuucp account, and assuming you aren't using
shadow passwords (I'm not sure what the default is anymore), all you
have to do is edit /etc/passwd, and clean out the password field for
nuucp.  If you are using shadow passwords, I think you can do the same
thing, but to /etc/shadow.

Now, even if you have an nuucp account without a password, it still
won't work!  HDB-UUCP doesn't, by default, support anon. uucp.  Each
system must have a line in /usr/lib/uucp/Systems.

This is a generic feature of HDB-UUCP.  If you've already tried this,
you'll notice in mail to the user uucp, and in the file
/usr/spool/uucp/.Admin/Foreign that any attempts to initiate anonymous
uucp will be recorded and reported.

To change this behavior, all you need to do is remove execute
permission from the script/programme /usr/lib/uucp/remote.unknown.

This is all documented in the System Administrator's Guide.

(Actually, a common convention is to set the nuucp password to "guest").
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP
+1-416-443-1734 [h]  +1-416-595-5425 [w]    VE3-TCP	Toronto, Ontario CANADA