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From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: how to connect UUCP nodes in the 21st century?
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:08:09 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID: <vogan9$d4k$1@reader2.panix.com>
References: <slrnvqggf0.pi.eternal@esware.naleco.com> <173921308610.26577.4951890872054731139@media.vsta.org> <voffnh$jq3$1@reader2.panix.com> <lues7l-9lc.ln1@intheattic.eternal-september.org>
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In article <lues7l-9lc.ln1@intheattic.eternal-september.org>,
Juancho  <eternal@notreally.com> wrote:
>On 2025-02-11, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>> In article <173921308610.26577.4951890872054731139@media.vsta.org>,
>> Andy Valencia  <vandys@vsta.org> wrote:
>>>eternal@notreally.com (Juancho) writes:
>>>> > I have used UUCP over SSH over IP a few times in the past.  SSH is used 
>>>> > as the transport for the UUCP character stream via STDIN & STDOUT.  It 
>>>> > doesn't involve any port forwarding.
>>>> What is the point of this? I mean, UUCP is/was used primarily for remote
>>>> login and to transfer files, which both are native functionalities of SSH.
>>>
>>>UUCP was primarily a store-and-forward, source routed file transfer
>>>mechanism.  Some files were metadata, saying what should be done with
>>>companion files--thus, email.  Drawing a blank on remote login?
>>
>> Perhaps Juancho meant remote command execution,
>> a la uux?
>
>I was thinking about the "ct" and "cu" commands of the uucp suite.

`cu` is just a serial communications program; it lets you use a
serial port and whatever that serial port is connected to;
historically it also had some syntactic sugar to connect to
systems that the administrator had put in the local UUCP
configuration.  Fundamentally it only lets you execute remote
commands in so far as the thing on the other end of the serial
port you use it with lets you do that, and `cu` itself is just
the communications agent.  I still occasionally use `cu` to talk
to little embedded devices and things like that.  Critically,
I doubt you could do `cu thathost!thishost` and expect it to
work (what if all outgoing lines from `thishost` were busy at
the time?).

Similarly, `ct` does more or less the same thing, but assumes
that a line is connected to a modem, and knows how to dial a
phone number (back in the bad old days this was a lot more
complex than having a Hayes compatible modem that understood the
"AT" command set); in that sense, it's a little less flexible
than `cu`.  But again, it's just a communications agent, not a
remote execution/login program itself.

`uux`, on the other hand, was actually designed to run commands
on some remote system: `uux seismo!me /bin/ls` or something
more involved like, `uux ucbvax!seismo!me /bin/ls` or whatever.
Still, this isn't exactly "remote login."

        - Dan C.