SEND-UUCP(8)

💖 send-uucp(8) — InterNetNews Documentation 💖

okay so bestie, you know how Usenet articles need to get to places that are, like, not on the real-time feed vibe? That's this whole program. Welcome to send-uucp, the InterNetNews manual page, but make it make sense. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

send-uucp — Send Usenet articles via UUCP. That's it, that's the whole name, and honestly? Iconic. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

send-uucp [site ...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So send-uucp is this little program that processes batch files written by innd(8) so it can send Usenet articles over to UUCP sites. It reads a configuration file to control how it behaves with all the different sites, because bestie, every site has opinions. 💅

Normally? You run it periodically out of cron, so it can put together batches and send them off to remote UUCP sites on a schedule. Very set-it-and-forget-it, very low-key slay.

Why does this exist? Two reasons, and they're both good ones: it makes it possible to reduce bandwidth usage, and it lets you send news to remote UUCP sites that literally cannot receive a real-time feed — like, say, if they're out here surviving on dial-up connections. 😭 Respect the dial-up girlies fr fr.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• Any arguments you hand to the program get interpreted as a list of sites specified in send-uucp.cf for which batches should be generated. So you're basically like "do these ones please."
• If no arguments are supplied, then batches will be generated for all sites listed in that configuration file. (Go big or go home energy. 🌈)

👑 CONFIGURATION 👑

The sites you're sending articles to have to be configured in the configuration file send-uucp.cf in pathetc as set in inn.conf. Each site gets its own line, and the line looks like this:

site[:host[:funnel]] [compressor [maxsize [batchtime]]]

Let's break down every single piece, because we're thorough in this house:

• site — The news site name being configured. This must match a site name from newsfeeds(5). No made-up names, bestie, it will not work.
• host — The UUCP host name to which batches should be sent for this site. If you omit it, the news site name gets used as the UUCP host name. Convenient, honestly.
• funnel — Here's the special case: if a site is configured as a funnel, send-uucp needs to flush the channel (or exploder) being used as the target of the funnel instead of flushing the site. That's literally what this field is for — it's the way to tell send-uucp the name of the channel or exploder to flush for this site. If you don't specify it, it defaults to flushing the site. 🫶
• compressor — The compression method to use for batches. This should be one of "bzip2", "compress", "gzip" or "none". Want to pass arguments to the compression command? You do that by using _ instead of spaces — like, for example, "gzip_-9". The default value is "gzip".
• maxsize — The maximum size in bytes of a single batch before compression. The default value is "500000" bytes.
• batchtime — A comma separated list of hours during which batches should be generated for a given site. When send-uucp runs, a site will only be processed if the current hour matches one of the hours in batchtime. The default is no limitation on when to generate batches. (Free spirit hours. 🦋)

Fields are separated by spaces, and only the site name actually needs to be specified — defaults get used for all the unspecified values, she's flexible like that. And if the first character on a line is a hash sign ("#"), then the rest of the line is ignored. 💅

🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

Here's an example for the send-uucp.cf configuration file, look at her go:

zoetermeer      gzip            1048576         5,18,22
hoofddorp       gzip            1048576         5,18,22
pa3ebv          gzip            1048576         5,18,22
drinkel         bzip2           1048576         5,6,18,20,22,0,2
manhole         compress        1048576         5,18,22
owl             compress        1048576
able
pern::MYFUNNEL!

This defines eight UUCP sites. Let's do a little vibe check on the whole thing:

• The first three and the last two use "gzip" compression.
• The fourth site ("drinkel") uses "bzip2".
• The remaining sites ("manhole" and "owl") use "compress".
• The first six use a batch size of 1 MB.
• The two last sites ("able" and "pern") use the default of 500,000 bytes.
• The "zoetermeer", "hoofddorp", "pa3ebv", and "manhole" sites will only have batches generated for them during the hours of 05:00, 18:00, and 22:00.
• The "drinkel" site will only have batches generated during those hours and 06:00, 20:00, 00:00, and 02:00. Busy girl. 😭
• There are no restrictions on when batches will be generated for "owl", "able" and "pern".

And the funnel situation: the "pern" site is configured as a funnel into "MYFUNNEL!". So send-uucp will issue ctlinnd flush MYFUNNEL! instead of ctlinnd flush pern. The way that works is so clean, honestly. ✨

As for the newsfeeds file, the usual flags used for a UUCP feed are "Tf,Wnb". Here's a typical entry for "zoetermeer", where the batching is kept between 4 KB and 1 KB:

zoetermeer\
    :*,!junk,!control,!control.*/!foo\
    :Tf,Wnb,B4096/1024:

🌈 SETTING UP UUCP FEEDS 🌈

Okay bestie, this is the big one, so grab a snack. 🍓 Here are the steps to follow to set up a UUCP feed over SSH between two news servers, using the UUCP implementation available in Debian as the "uucp" package. The mechanisms described below should be transposed if you use another UUCP implementation. (And if you do — please inform the INN maintainers about how to set up a feed with another UUCP implementation, so that it can be added to this documentation. They genuinely want to know! 🫶)

1. First of all, make sure rnews is correctly installed setuid "news", owned by group "uucp", and mode "4550". This will allow the UUCP subsystem to run rnews to process UUCP batches of news articles. The "configure" flag --enable-uucp-rnews takes care of it when installing INN. Otherwise, you'll have to manually change the permissions on rnews. (Not me forgetting this step and then wondering why nothing works 💀)
2. Install the "uucp" package. It will notably provide uucico(8) and uux(1). Hello, new friends.
3. Configure in /etc/uucp/Poll the remote news servers to poll, and the hours during which they are to be polled. For instance, if you send to "news.server.to.feed" UUCP batches every 4 hours, you can use:

schedule news.server.to.feed 00
poll news.server.to.feed 00 04 08 12 16 20

If sending is hourly, just list all the hours. Simple as that. ⭐

4. Configure in /etc/uucp/call the credentials (usernames and passwords) to use when authenticating against remote news servers, one per line. For instance:

news.server.to.feed login password

5. Configure in /etc/uucp/config the UUCP name of the local news server. For instance:

nodename my.news.server

6. Check that /etc/uucp/expire fits your needs as for the number of days batches are retained as well as the configuration of daily reports. Default values are normally fine, though you may want to receive a daily report only if unusual things happen (and in that case, just set "$important_only" to "1"). Lowkey the move.
7. Configure in /etc/uucp/passwd the credentials (usernames and passwords separated by a tabulation) remote news servers use when authenticating against the local news server, one per line. For instance:

login<TAB>password

8. Configure in /etc/uucp/sys how remote news servers connect to the local news server. A typical entry to set an SSH connection is the following one, where pathbin should be changed to the real path to rnews:

system news.server.to.feed
call-login *
call-password *
commands <pathbin>/rnews
time any
chat "" \d\d\r\c ogin: \d\L word: \P
chat-timeout 120
protocol i
port ssh.news.server.to.feed

9. Configure in /etc/uucp/port how to connect to remote news servers. A typical entry to set an SSH connection using a private key is:

port ssh.news.server.to.feed
type pipe
command /bin/ssh -a -x -q -i <key> -l uucp news.server.to.feed
reliable true
protocol etyig

where key is the path to the private key to use for the SSH connection, like for instance /var/spool/uucp/.ssh/id_private_key. 🗝️

10. Make sure the administrators of remote news servers have added the public key related to id_private_key for connections to the "uucp" user of the remote news servers. Coordinate with your people, bestie.
11. Supposing the home directory of the "uucp" user is /var/spool/uucp, you need to configure the SSH keys in the .ssh subdirectory. First, add the public keys of all remote news servers in authorized_keys. A typical entry is the following one, which should be in 1 line (it is wrapped here for a proper display in man page):

no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,
command="/usr/sbin/uucico -l",from="news.server.to.feed"
ssh-rsa xxxyyyzzz uucp@news.server.to.feed

This ensures the SSH connection will not be used for another goal than exchanging UUCP batches. Locked down, no side quests. 🔒

12. Make sure id_private_key is correctly present, as set in /etc/uucp/port, and only readable by the "uucp" user. Permissions era, we love to see it.
13. Manually run as the "uucp" user the command set in /etc/uucp/port so as to create the known_hosts file to make sure the SSH setting is fine.

/bin/ssh -a -x -q -i <key> -l uucp news.server.to.feed

14. Parameterize the feed to send to the remote servers. A typical entry in newsfeeds to generate batches in pathoutgoing is:

news.server.to.feed/pathname:*:Tf,Wnb,B4096/1024:

15. Set up the compression method, batch sizes and when to generate them in send-uucp.cf located in pathetc, as described earlier in this documentation.

news.server.to.feed   bzip2      1048576   3,7,11,15,19,23

16. Check that send-uucp is started hourly in crontab by the "news" user. For instance in /etc/cron.d/inn2:

52 * * * * news <pathbin>/send-uucp

It can be useful to set up a different launch time than your remote servers. For instance, if you generate batches every hour at minute 52, a remote peer may do the same at minute 22. This way, you may exchange articles more frequently, depending on when each other connects. Staggered schedules, mutual slay. 💅

17. Check that UUCP programs are automatically started in crontab (usually, uudemon.hr is called hourly in /etc/cron.d/uucp to poll remote news servers, and uudemon.day daily in /etc/cron.daily/uucp).

Like for send-uucp, adjust the launch time to maximize the number and the freshness of batches to exchanges. Fresh batches only, we don't do stale. ✨

18. Check the logs in /var/log/uucp to ensure everything works fine, both polling and sending.

You will see that send-uucp prepares rnews batches named like D.0I8Y, that are queued by uux. When uucico is afterwards started from cron to transfer these batches, uucico takes available batches from the remote sites at the same time. These received batches are then processed by uuxqt which calls rnews to inject them.

That's all! 🎉

💜 FILES 💜

• pathbin/send-uucp — The Perl script itself used to create news batches from the outgoing files. She's the main character here, fr fr. 👑
• pathetc/send-uucp.cf — The configuration file which specifies a list of sites to be processed.
• pathlog/send-uucp.log — The log file used if the syslog facility is not available.

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okay and there's still more page coming, so don't close the tab on me yet — we're not done 💅

📜 HISTORY 📜

okay so storytime, bestie, because this page has lore ✨

• This program was originally written by Edvard Tuinder <ed@elm.net> — an absolute founding father, we stan 🫶
• Then it was maintained and extended by Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl> — lowkey the glow-up era 💅
• Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it> cleaned up the code for inclusion in INN — the way he did a little tidy-up so it could move in with the rest of INN, iconic 🧹✨
• This manual page was originally written by Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk> — bestie wrote the whole manpage, no cap 🎀
• and the detailed procedure to set up a UUCP feed was added by Julien Élie — thank you for the tutorial, queen 👑

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

go read these next, fr fr, they're the main character energy adjacent pages 🌈

• innd(8)
• newsfeeds(5)
• uucp(8)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🦋 you made it to the end, so proud of you, genuinely 💖

little footer moment for the girlies who read the credits: this is from INN 2.7.4, dated 2025-03-29, and the page itself is SEND-UUCP(8) ✨ slay, go send some news 🎀