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Text File | 1992-01-29 | 16.1 KB | 351 lines | [TEXT/ALFA]

Basic setup and installation instructions Step 0: familiarize yourself with the territory The installation of uupc requires that you understand a fair bit about how uucp communications work, about how uucp- and Internet-based electronic mail works, about the Domain Name System and the uucp maps, and about how modems work. Quite simply, this is not a job for someone who is a complete novice concerning these subjects... it's not a "plug-and-play" task. If you have not done a uucp installation on some other system (Unix, most likely), or have not used Internet-style electronic mail systems for at least a few months, I would strongly recommend that you do some additional reading before starting the installation of uupc. Two good handbooks... oriented towards the email user, and the email administrator respectively, are: TITLE: Using UUCP and USENET AUTHOR: Todino, Grace AUTHOR: Dougherty, Dale SUBJECT: Introduction PUBLISHER: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. DATE: 1990 PAGES: 210 ISBN: 0-937175-10-2 APPROX_COST: 21.95 KEYWORDS: Nutshell Handbook SUGGESTED_BY: Mitch Wright <mitch@hq.af.mil> SUPPLIERS E-mail: ... uunet!ora!nuts Phone#: 1-800-338-NUTS TITLE: Managing UUCP and USENET AUTHOR: O'Reilly, Tim AUTHOR: Todino, Grace SUBJECT: Introduction PUBLISHER: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. DATE: 1990 PAGES: 289 ISBN: 0-937175-48-X APPROX_COST: 24.95 KEYWORDS: Nutshell Handbook SUGGESTED_BY: Mitch Wright <mitch@hq.af.mil> SUPPLIERS E-mail: ... uunet!ora!nuts Phone#: 1-800-338-NUTS You may find these books at a good computer-oriented bookstore in your area... if not, you can order them directly from the publisher. [Disclaimer: I haven't read them myself... I learned about uucp the hard way, before these books were available. They have a very good reputation among people on USENET, and I recommend them on that basis.] So... borrow or buy copies, read them, and understand them. Then, go on to the next section. I'll wait. ... Ok. On to the next topic. Another good source of information is the network or system or electronic mail administrator at a local well-connected USENET site. Many of these peoples hack networking code for the love of it, as well as doing it for pay. They are frequently willing to share their knowledge, if approached properly. Bribes help... chocolate in exotic forms, and an offer of a good Szechuan dinner are legitimate tender. Another note concerning system administrators. A friendly sysadmin may be willing to provide you with a uucp connection (a "mail feed") without charge, from a system under her or his administrative control. The chances of this occurring vary quite a bit from case to case. If you can convince a sysadmin that you are a friendly, responsible individual (or small company) which understands the ropes, is willing to be a "good network neighbor", won't cause problems, etc. then you may very well be able to establish a useful netmail connection at little or no cost. If you come across as a demanding, annoying, trouble-making bozo, you'll get the cold shoulder, and will end up with no alternative but to subscribe to a commercial service for your netmail connection... this will cost you hard cash. Support your local sysadmin... and, once you've earned her trust, do NOT abuse it. You do NOT want to develop a bad reputation on The Net... it can stick like glue. Step 1: What you'll need To get hooked up to the outside world via uupc, you'll need a number of things: some hardware, some software, some paperware. Hardware: * A Mac running System 4.2 or later (NOTE: I haven't tested this software with anything prior to 6.0.3; earlier versions of the System should work, but I can't promise this). * A modem (preferably one which understands the Hayes command-set. Speeds of 2400 bits/second (V.22bis) or faster are recommended, especially if you plan to send or receive a lot of mail. High-speed modems (V.32, V.32bis, Telebit PEP) are supported. Talk to the administrator of the system(s) with which you plan to communicate, and find out what sorts of modems they support... then use that to influence your purchase decision, if any. * A Mac-to-modem cable. A standard "Mac Plus/SE/II to Hayes-compatible modem" cable is appropriate in most cases. If you wish to use a "hardware handshaking" cable, make SURE that it connects the Mac's handshake output to DTR as well as to RTS... if it doesn't, uupc won't be able to hang up the phone properly. Software: * The uupc 3.0 (or later) software distribution. This includes the uupc program itself, the pcmail program, and some auxiliary configuration and data files. * ResEdit. You'll need it to customize the configuration file. No fancy ResEdit editors or pickers are required. Any version of ResEdit which is new enough, old enough, or tweaked enough to run on your Mac should do the job. * A terminal emulator program of some sort (recommended but not essential). It'll help you in the process of configuring your modem, and figuring out your chat scripts. * An alternate mail reading/writing program (optional) (shameless plug). The "pcmail" program which comes with uupc is a bare-bones shell... it's functional, but not terribly convenient or pretty. You may wish to use one which is better suited to the Mac environment. Send email to "dplatt@snulbug.mtview.ca.us" for information about Fernmail, a shareware mail program which is compatible with uupc. 'Nuff said. Paperware: * A uucp "node name"... a shorthand name by which your system can be distingished from every other uucp system in the universe. Must consist of lower-case letters, and digits, only. Its first seven characters must be unique from any other uucp system name in use... your nodename can be longer than seven characters, but only the first seven count. "All the good names are taken", so you'll have to be inventive, or very bland (there are lots of combinations of randomly-chosen letters and digits which aren't in use, but they're _boring_). Please DO NOT simply pick an interesting-sounding name at random, and start using it without further checking. If you choose a name which is already in use elsewhere, and which has been "registered" to the system which got the name first, all sorts of bad things will happen. You'll have trouble getting mail delivered properly, you'll probably receive mail which wasn't intended for you, you may end up being treated as an "intermediate node" for torrents of third-party mail that you can't handle properly, and people will yell at you a lot. Don't do this, please. Instead, make sure that the name you want to use isn't in use. How to check? Well, the "bible" of uucp node-names is the set of USENET articles which are posted to the comp.mail.maps newsgroup on an ongoing basis. Check with that friendly system adminstrator I mentioned above... or with any of the commercial uucp hookup services listed in the "Finding somebody to talk to" document... and ask them to run a map-search for you. If the name you want isn't in use, you (or another sysadmin) can mail off a map-file to your regional map coordinator, and thus reserve the name for your own use. Please DO register your name... if you don't, some innocent party may start using it in the future, and all of the bad things I mentioned above will happen. * A site to connect with. You'll need to establish communications with at least one existing uucp site... the more well-connected the better. See the "Finding somebody to talk do" documentation for some suggestions as to how you might find such a site. * The details on how to connect with your uucp neighbor. You'll need to know their modem phone number, the communications speed, and the sequence of steps required to log onto their system. Step 2: Setting up the folders uupc uses a set of several folders, in which it stores various files needed for its operation. For the sake of convenience, these folders are usually stored within one central organizing folder, on a single hard disk. This isn't a hard requirement; you may place these folders anywhere on your hard disk(s) that you wish, as long as you tell uupc where they are. [Note... you cannot use System 7 Finder aliases with uucp, as it doesn't know how to resolve them.] You'll need to tell uupc where each of these folders is, by editing a 'STR ' resource in uupc's settings file. In each 'STR ' resource, you'll place the complete pathname of the folder. For example, the default configuration file suggests the following layout: name typical value meaning HOME My disk:uucp:home:jones Your personal mail files MAILDIR My disk:uucp:mail incoming mail CONFDIR My disk:uucp:config config files TEMPDIR My disk:uucp:tmp temp files SPOOLDIR My disk:uucp:spool uucp spool files PUBDIR My disk:uucp:public anybody-can-read In each of these 'STR ' resources, you'll need to replace the text "My disk" with the name of the Macintosh disk on which you wish these folders to be placed. You don't actually have to create each of these folders yourself... if you set up the UUPC Settings file correctly, uupc will create the folders the first time it needs to access them. So... decide where you want your uucp folder hierarchy to be placed. Copy the "Sample UUPC Settings" file from the uupc distribution, and change its name to "UUPC Settings". Edit the resources in the UUPC Settings file to match the directory hierarchy you've decided upon. Step 3: Setting up the user configuration You'll need to edit some of the other 'STR ' resources in the UUPC Settings file, to configure uupc with the information it will need to operate. name typical value meaning MAILBOX mbox user's mailbox file NAME Fred Jones your real name USERNAME jones your username NODENAME mynode uucp site name DOMAIN mynode.uucp domain-style site name MAILSERVICE hisnode primary uucp neighbor SPEED 2400 default port speed TIMEDIFF -0800 (PST) timezone MAILCOPY mail.sent copy of outbound mail ALIAS Alias name of alias file in your home directory SEQUENCEFILE SEQF name of sequence file SLEEPTIME 5 number of minutes between queue runs in automatic mode PASSWORD LemmeIn password that other uucp sites should use when calling you ROUTEVIA other,bill comma-separated list of sites to which mail can be sent directly Your USERNAME should match the last level of the HOME folder path (e.g. "jones" matches the last part of "My disk:home:jones"). MAILSERVICE should be the name of your primary uucp neighbor... the site to which all outgoing mail should be sent (except for sites on the ROUTEVIA list; mail for those sites is sent directly to them). Now... either place the UUPC Settings file in the same folder as the uupc and pcmail applications, or drop it into your System folder. Step 4: Trial run Double-click on the uupc 3.0 application icon. uupc should start up, open a window, and report that it's going idle. As soon as it does, select Quit from the File menu. You should find that uupc has created several of the folders mentioned in your UUPC Settings file. In particular, the directory named in your CONFDIR string should have been created in the correct place. If it wasn't, or if any I/O error messages occurred when you ran uupc 3.0, go back and re-check your UUPC Settings file. Step 5: Installing your Systems and Schedule files. Copy the sample Systems file into the configuration folder, and change its name to "Systems". This is the file which will identify the systems that your Mac can connect with via uucp, the times at which such connections are permitted to be made, the modem speed and setup information required, and the set of prompts and commands that your Mac must exchange with each neighboring system in order to access that system's uucp software. Edit the Systems file, based on the information you collected way back up in Step 1. The format of the Systems file is described in the "UUPC 3.0 Systems file format" document. Be sure to comment out any entries that you don't plan on using (for example, all of the sample ones!) You may also wish to copy the sample Schedule file into the configuration folder and change its name to "Schedule". This file specifies the times at which your system should place calls to ("poll") other uucp systems to check for inbound mail. Step 6: Placing a call Double-click on the uupc 3.0 application icon. uupc should start up, open a window, and report that it's going idle. Pull down the Call menu, but don't select anything. You should see, at the bottom of this menu, a list of each of the systems you added to the Systems file. Select the name of your primary uucp neighbor from the Call menu. uupc will initiate a call. If everything goes well, uupc will dial the neighbor's phone number on your modem, connect to your neighbor's modem, log in, go through uucp startup, exchange a couple of "I have nothing for you, do you have something for me" messages, and then hang up. Step 7: Sending mail Double-click on the pcmail icon. A dialog box will appear, giving you the chance to select input and output files (don't bother, this time) and to enter a command line. The command line will contain the string "pcmail 3.0". Click on the end of the command line, and edit it so that it reads "pcmail 3.0" MAILSERVICE!NODENAME!USERNAME but instead of typing any of the capitalized words, type in the actual value from your configuration file. For example, if you were using the sample values shown above (NOT a good idea!) you'd type "pcmail 3.0" hisnode!mynode!jones Click the OK button. A normal window will appear. Type in the following text (removing the indentations on each line so that each line begins in column 1): Subject: This message should come back to me This is a test. If it works correctly, this message should go out to my mail relay site, and be sent right back here. Note that you WILL NOT BE ABLE to edit any line of the message after you press return! When you've entered the message, type control-D. pcmail will queue the message for delivery, and ask you to press Return to exit. Do so. Double-click on the uupc icon. From the Call menu, select "Any site with jobs pending". uupc should initiate a call to your primary neighbor, and deliver the outbound mail (two files will be transmitted). Wait a few minutes to let your neighbor process the mail and prepare to send it back to you. Sometimes 10 seconds is enough, sometimes a half-hour or more is required. Initiate a call to your neighbor by selecting its name from the Call menu. uupc should place a call, and should receive the mail (two files will be received). After disconnecting, uupc should deliver the mail to your mailbox... you should see an "rmail" command being executed. Double-click on the pcmail icon again. When the options dialog appears, click OK. pcmail should show you the header line of your mail (as message number zero). Type "p" to print the message, then "d" to delete it. Finally, type "q" to quit, and hit return to exit the program. Your uupc system is now up and functioning! Step 8: Troubleshooting Probably, things won't go this smoothly. To figure out why things aren't working, it's usually best to try placing a call in debugging mode, watch the messages as they scroll by, and try to figure out where things are going awry. To do this, select the "Call system" command from the File menu. In the resulting dialog box, type the name of the system you want to call, and set the debug level to a value between 1 and 9 (2 and 5 are good values to start with). Then, watch the window and make a note of how far uupc gets... or doesn't get... in placing its call. See the "Troubleshooting" document for ideas on how to go about tracing down the cause of the problem.