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To:	MRGATE::"ARISIA::EVERHART"
Subj:	L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews: Part 2 -- DECUS UUCP

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From: Ted Nieland <@AAMRL.AF.MIL:TNIELAND@FALCON>
Subject: L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews: Part 2 -- DECUS UUCP
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		The Spring 1989 L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews
			Part 2: DECUS UUCP Review


Jon Pinkley
Westinghouse Electric Corporation


Introduction by  Ted Nieland
Control Data Corporation

This is a review of the DECUS UUCP section of Spring 1989 L&T/VAX SIG Tape.  
Due to the large amount of overlap between the L&T and VAX SIG tapes, the
Tape editors decided to combine the tapes into one large tape with no 
overlap.  This SIGs tape contains many useful items for people with VAX 
Computers and people interested in Languages and Tools.

The reviews of the L&T submissions to the tape will be published in 
Leverage.   The remaining VAX Submissions will appear elsewhere (or in future 
issue(s) of the Pageswapper.

The reviewers have scoured through most of the tape and have jotted down the
following notes on the material that is on the tape.  Not everything on the
tape is reviewed due to the shear volume of material, but it is hoped that
this review will help people in deciding what on the tape might be useful to
them.

The SIG tapes are a project started by the SIGs a while back as a method of 
distributing free software that might be helpful to others.  Not all of the 
material on the tapes are "finished" products.  

The encapsulated reviews are rated on a 1-5 scale with 5 being excellent.

DECUS UUCP is the result of the VAX SIG's VMSNET Working group.  It is VMS 
version of the UUCP protocol for transmitting message across dial-up lines.  
VMS systems can now become part of the world-wide UUCP network.  Due to the 
major importance of this submission, the review is being published separately.



Submission Subdirectory:        [VAX89A3.UUCP]
Ease of installation:           3
Documentation:                  5
Intended Audience:              General
Ease of use:                    5
Usefulness:                     5
Sources included:               Yes, VAX C, VAX Pascal, Macro
Objects supplied:               Yes

Introduction:

    Just what is UUCP?  UUCP is an acronym for Unix to Unix CoPy.
    You may wonder what good that will do on your VMS machine;
    it provides the underlying mechanism for a every flexible
    E-mail system.  I stole the following from the DECUS UUCP
    System Manager's Guide:

        "DECUS UUCP is a partial implementation of uucp
        facilities for VMS systems.  It provides support for uucp
        mail and news transfer, allowing you to join the existing
        uucp mail and news network.  There is no provision for
        user-requested file transfers (in other words, no "uucp"
        DCL command is included), nor for arbitrary remote
        command execution (no "uux" command either)."

    DECUS UUCP provides VMS with the capability of exchanging
    mail with other uucp capable systems.  This is normally done
    via a dial-up connection.  The mail system is a store and forward
    system, so a direct connection is not needed between the
    systems exchanging mail.  

    You can use this for a company private mail network or you
    can "join" the "uucp mail network" by arranging a connection
    to a current network site, and publishing your "uucp map
    entry".  

    As part of the uucp mail network, anyone else in the network
    that knows your uucp address can send you mail.  Mail can
    also be exchanged with systems on other networks via gateways
    -- systems that are connected to more than a single network,
    and can forward mail between them.  There are gateways
    connecting the uucp network, the Internet, SPAN, Bitnet,
    HEPNET, Digital's Easynet, Fidonet, and others.  

    Think about that a minute.  This provides VMS with an
    integrated E-mail system that is more widely connected than
    many dedicated mail servers.  Your user's won't have to log
    into a separate machine just to read their mail.  In fact,
    they won't even need to learn to use a new user interface to
    receive and reply to mail.  To send mail to another system,
    they will only need to know how to specify a uucp or internet
    style address.  They will still use the standard VMS MAIL
    utility to send and receive mail.

    The second major feature of DECUS UUCP is the capability of
    sending and receiving "Netnews".  The package is capable of
    exchanging News with Unix (or other DECUS UUCP) sites using
    the preferred "compressed rnews" format.  The usenet news is
    a set of diverse newsgroups that get distributed among
    cooperating sites.  

    DECUS UUCP V1.1 integrates ANU NEWS V5.7, which is a VMS
    Netnews utility.  See the review of ANU NEWS which follows
    for details.  

    As you can tell, I am impressed by this submission. (Thanks a
    lot Jamie Hanrahan, Tom Allebrandi and Mark Pizzolato.)

Installation:

    Installing this package is not trivial, there are a lot of
    details to consider, and you will have to find another site
    to exchange mail with.  If possible, find someone else that
    has installed DECUS UUCP on their system and discuss things
    with them.  There is a lot of documentation, and you really
    do need to read it.  Once you are on the net, you will be
    able to get help via the network... the problem is getting
    booted up the first time.

    Fortunately, once the installation is complete, there is very
    little that must be done to maintain it.  Even the mail
    routing tables are updated automatically if you receive the
    Netnews comp.mail.maps newsgroup.  You will have to install
    ANU NEWS to get this feature.

    The only training necessary for users is informing them how
    to specify the address in mail.  The package makes use of the
    mail "foreign protocol interface" that was first publicly
    documented by Kevin Carosso.  Addresses are specified as
    UUCP%"user@internet-domain" or
    UUCP%"firsthop!secondhop!destination!user".

But what about Security?  Did you say dial-up?

    To increase security, this version of uucp is intentionally
    crippled.  It does not allow arbitrary commands to be
    executed on behalf of the remote site.  The remote site is
    restricted to creating files in the designated "spool"
    directory only.  As shipped, DECUS uucp is considerably more
    secure than Unix uucp (albeit, less flexible).  None of the
    security holes exploited by the "Internet Worm" of November,
    1988 are applicable to this uucp implementation (it affected
    only TCP/IP connections).

    Because security is a major concern of many VAX system
    managers, making DECUS UUCP secure was a paramount goal of
    the project.  The uucp dial-in accounts run within "captive"
    accounts, and do not have any privilege other than TMPMBX.

    For the timid, you can configure your site to be a dial-out
    only site, but you will them have to poll another site to
    check for mail.  (Of course you will have to find someone
    that trusts you to dial in.)

Summary:  

    If you want to be part of the metanetwork, this is a good way
    to get started.  Even if you only want a company private
    mail system between computers at different locations, this
    provides a good solution.  The mail can even be delivered
    during off peak hours to save money on the phone calls.
    

