This directory contains a number of modifications to UUCP that are useful for news. Only the minus.z mod is really crucial, the others are there primarily to boost performance so as to cut down on the load on your machine. There are many other mods to UUCP kicking around - many bug fixes and security improvements. Watch net.bugs.uucp for these. One large mod that is very useful is the Duke uudir mod, which puts files in SPOOL into subdirectories. This mod is very much a kludge, and it certainly could be done better, but until a wonderful version is made available, substantial performance gains can be attained. (Since scanning a UNIX directory is quadratic on the size of the directory, the 5-fold reduction in directory size from uudir can result in a factor of 25 improvement in disk utilization.) uudir is easy to install in any UUCP, but it contains some assembly language code, which has been written only for the VAX and PDP-11. All these changes are transparent to your UUCP neighbors - you can still talk to UUCP's that don't have these mods made - you can even exchange news with older systems. (Batching, with or without the =batch mod, requires at least a 2.10 news system on the other end.) Note: All of these changes except the =batch have been installed in version of uucp distributed with 4.3BSD minus.z.5 minux.z.v7 This mod implements the -z and -n options to uux. These prevent uuxqt from mailing back annoying little messages to whoever happened to start up the uucico daemon telling them that the rnews command executed OK. -z says "only send a message if the rnews command bombed out", -n says "never send one". -z is recommended. In order for your users not to be bombarded with these messages, all your USENET neighbors must install this. "5" is for System V and UNIX 5.0, "v7" is for V7 and 4BSD. cpu.speedup A simple fix to V7 and 4BSD UUCP to keep uicico from eating up all the CPU time on your system when receiving files. Highly recommended, especially if all your traffic is at 2400 baud or slower. uux.minus.c A mod to uux.c to support a uux -c option, e.g. uux -c yoursys!rnews '<' /usr/spool/news/net/news/123 which prevents uux from making a separate copy of each article in the spool directory for each system. =batch Code to allow commands such as uux -c yoursys!rnews '<' =/usr/lib/news/batch_/usr/spool/batch/yoursys so that, once the connection is fired up and ready to transfer the file, the command "/usr/lib/news/batch /usr/spool/batch/yoursys" will be started up, and its output copied to the other system. The advantage here is that batching is possible without keeping a full copy of the news on spool waiting for a connection to be established. This can be a big win if the other system is down for any length of time. It does not good without the uux.minus.c mod below. Beware of security issues - they have not been carefully addressed here, and this mod opens up some potential security holes. It only allows one command to be fired up, and batch should check that the file of names is in a safe directory (not /usr/lib/uucp/L.sys or /etc/passwd). Ideally batch should be suid, since the command will run as uucp.