Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk2.iso/misc/volume3/pcmail/part03/Installation

Text File | 1989-02-03 | 8KB | 186 lines

THE UNIX SIDE OF THE CONNECTION

The pc-mail programs will need a UNIX host to  exchange  messages
with.  This  automatically gives access to other networks. I sug-
gest the following strategy:

 - Get a uucp login, say, uuxyz on a UNIX system. This will  also
become the uucp-node name of the pc. The file /usr/lib/uucp/L.sys
should be extended with an entry, e.g.

 uuxyz Passive

(on some systems one has to use `Never' instead of `Passive'). It
may also be necessary to update the /usr/lib/uucp/USERFILE.

 - Have all mail for user uuxyz forwarded to  uuxyz!somebody.  On
BSD  UNIX  systems,  this  is  achieved  by  placing  the address
`uuxyz!somebody' in  a  file  ~uuxyz/.forward;  on  System-V  one
should  put  the  text  `Forward  to  uuxyz!somebody' in the file
/usr/mail/uuxyz, which should be read/writeable by group mail.

In the above examples, somebody is a  name  that  can  be  freely
chosen;  it  will  not  be used by the pc. Of course, mail can be
forwarded to uuxyz!somebody from other accounts as well.

The result of all this is that you can send mail to any  user  on
the UNIX host by just specifying her login name; the host name of
your pc will not appear in mail headers. People can send mail  to
you  by  specifying an address on the UNIX host. There is no need
to register the pc in the uucp maps.

If the above strategy is not what you  like,  you  will  have  to
operate  as  a  "real"  uucp node and should #define UUCP_HOST in
sendwork.c. You should also be registered as a uucp  node.  There
is more discussion about this in sendwork.c

As a minimum, the UNIX host should support the standard uucp  `g'
protocol.  This  protocol was developed for eight-bit data paths.
Unfortunately, modern networks often eat up  XON/XOFF  and  other
control characters.

To handle non-transparent networks  I  have  written  a  protocol
called  `k'. It has been used with the Eindhoven University Sytek
network for over two years and is part of the  pc-mail  distribu-
tion.  If  you're  really  desperate (and have UNIX source) build
this protocol into the uucico program  by  adding  the  following
line to struct Proto Ptbl[] in cntrl.c:

 'k', kturnon, krdmsg, kwrmsg, krddata, kwrdata, kturnoff,

and linking the uucico objects with kio.c  kp.h  kphys.c  kpres.c
and ktrans.c.

THE PC SIDE OF THE CONNECTION

To bring pc-mail up, edit the makefile to reflect the system  you
are  using  (there  are  separate makefiles for UNIX and MS-DOS).
The MS-DOS makefile is for a UNIX-compatible make utility  posted
to  usenet  near  the  end of 1986. There is a batch command file
(buidall.bat) for those who do not have  a  unix-compatible  make
utility.  For testing purposes it is convenient to run this stuff
on a UNIX host.

Saying `make' should produce five programs:

 - mail, the menu-driven user interface
 - cmail, a program that checks if there is new mail
 - smail, a program that queues messages for  transmission  after
          doing alias substitution on mail addresses
 - cico, the program that performs dialups and file transfers
 - rmail, extracts "From" info from mail received by cico

The programs access a common data base in the  form  of  a  spool
directory  with  setup  file,  logfile  and  message files. There
should be no  other  files  in  the  spool  directory,  to  avoid
confusion.  You  will  have  to  create  the spool directory; the
programs will not do that.

You will have to set some environment  variables  before  running
the mail program.

 - MAILDIR, the absolute path to your spool directory
 - EDITOR, the name of your favourite editor program
 - PATH, in order locate the executables

The editor command may be an MS-DOS batch file; in that case  you
should include the '.bat' suffix in the command name.

The following two environment variables are optional.

 - MAILPRN, if printer output should not go to PRN
 - MAILCMD, command that is executed when the mail program  exits

Also,  make  sure  that  the limit on the number of open files is
large enough (20 or so). On MS-DOS, this is  handled  by  a  line
`files=20' in the CONFIG.SYS file.

Run the interactive mail program and choose the setup command. On
MS-DOS  systems  only  the  com1  port  is  supported  (see  file
comport.s). Here is my setup (some  names  changed)  for  getting
through the TUE port selector:

    communications_port: com1
    baud_rate:           1200
    remote_host_name:    eutwc1
    login_name:          uutest
    dialup_sequence:     atm\r OK atdt455215\r CONNECT \0 ease: xyz\r ease:
xyz\r choice: 1\r called: b076\r CLOSED \r
    disconnect_sequence: \0

All entries must be filled or the  cico  program  will  complain.
The MS-DOS version supports the com1 port only.

The dial-up sequence requires some explanation. Basically it is a
list  of words separated by whitespace. The first word is sent to
the comm. port. The program  will  wait  until  it  receives  the
second word. And so on. Unlike real uucp (or kermit), there is no
retry facility. The backslash escape sequences  are  stolen  from
the c programming language, with some extensions:

 \b    backspace
 \f    formfeed
 \n    linefeed
 \r    carriage return
 \s    blank
 \t    tab
 \\    backslash
 \nnn    octal code for a character

In order to send or expect an empty string, use the \0 sequence.

It is not possible to send null characters. The dial-up  sequence
should terminate when the UNIX host displays its "login:" prompt;
the remainder of the dialup sequence is built into the  software.
This,  and  having  (pc  node  name)  == (uucp login name) are to
prevent fraud. Thus,  assuming  a  Hayes-compatible  modem,  your
dialup sequence could be as simple as:

    atm\r OK atdt455215\r CONNECT \0

When this dialup sequence succeeds, the  program  continues  with
its built-in sequence:

    ogin: login_name\r ssword: your_password\r

The disconnect sequence uses the same  escape  sequences  as  the
dial-up  sequence,  but does not use the send/expect protocol. In
the above sequence, the disconnect sequence is an empty string.

If the cico program has problems communicating with the UNIX host
you can run it by hand, for example:

 cico -d 9 -p your_password

which will  produce  a  lot  of  debugging  output.  Setting  the
debugging  level  to less than 9 produces less output. Level 4 is
sufficient to monitor the dial-up and login sequence.

ALIAS DATABASE

The user can define aliases for (groups of) mail  addresses.  The
format  of  the alias data base is simple: it is a text file with
on each line:

 alias replacement part

The replacement  part  may  be  one  or  more  words;  words  are
separated  by  blanks,  tabs  or commas. Whenever the smail (mail
spooler) program recognizes an  alias,  it  is  replaced  by  the
`replacement'  part.  Aliases  may  be  defined in terms of other
aliases; also the order in which they appear in  the  alias  data
base  is not important (except when an alias is defined more than
once; the program  remembers  only  the  last  definition  of  an
alias).  The  alias  expansion software is smart enough to detect
infinite loops and to suppress multiple occurrances of  the  same
recipient. Alias substitution is not case-sensitive.

BATCH-MODE OPERATION

The cmail program can be run from a batch file (say each time the
pc  is  turned on), contact the UNIX host, and report if there is
new mail. Also, you may want to auto-execute  the  cmail  command
when exiting from the interactive mail shell. See the manual page
in the cmail.c source.