CIRR.COM Support UUCP

Do you have questions on configuring/using your UUCP account with the Central Iowa (Model) Railroad?

Below are some frequently asked questions about UUCP connections with CIRR. If you don't find your question answered below, please send us email, and we'll do our best to answer your question.

• How do I configure Taylor UUCP?

  Provided with most Linux distributions, NetBSD, FreeBSD (prior to version 5.0), and OpenBSD (prior to version 3.0). May be installed by hand on other UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems.

• How do I configure HDB UUCP?

  HoneyDanBer is the UUCP provided on System V, release 4 and later, HP-UX, Solaris and some System V, release 3 systems (such as SCO OpenServer.)

• Where can I find the Taylor UUCP documentation?

  The Taylor UUCP documentation is usually delivered with the operating system or source distribution. It is delivered as a texinfo file. The link above will take you to a HTML version of the document.

• Ok, I've set up my UUCP software as described above. Now what?

  Once the needed configuration files are in place, and you've inserted your username and passwords into the correct fields, mak a test poll using uucico.

  To watch it work, use the following command line (as the UUCP user) uucico -x9 -r1 -s cirr.com. If everything is set up correctly, you'll watch it connect to uucp.cirr.com, and see your system request any outstanding work from cirr.com. (there probably won't be any.. :-)

  Note: Taylor-UUCP always detaches from the terminal, and goes into the background. You should look in the debug file (as defined by your Taylor-UUCP config file's debugfile entry.)

  Once you've successfully polled cirr.com, try sending yourself mail as username@uucpname.cirr.com. If you're using UUCP exclusively, you should a job show up in your outbound UUCP queue. If you're sending mail out via SMTP, it'll go out that way, and return via UUCP.

  Once you've got a bit of work for your site at cirr.com, poll cirr.com again, and watch the job come back.

• Okay, I've been able to poll cirr.com. How do I make it poll automatically?

  You should set up a crontab(1) entry for the UUCP user to cause a periodic poll. Most likely, you'll just want to create an entry like uucico -r1 -s cirr.com in the UUCP users crontab entry.

• My DNS is hosted elsewhere. What host should I put in my MX records?

  Your MX (Mail-eXchanger) records should point to uucp.cirr.com. uucp.cirr.com will then forward the mail via your UUCP connection to your host.

• What is the UUCP node name used by uucp.cirr.com?

  uucp.cirr.com uses a UUCP node name of cirr.com. Use this as the first field of your HDB Systems file entry, or as the value of system entry in your Taylor UUCP sys file.

  The examples above ("How do I...") are correct for use with uucp.cirr.com.

• How do I force a call?

  A call can be forced in all versions of uucp by using the following command line:

  uucico -r1 -s cirr.com

  The -r1 sets the local uucico program to be the master during the uucp session, while the -s cirr.com tells the local uucico program which system to call.