General introductions to UUCP are available, and perhaps one day I will write one. In the meantime, here is a very brief one that concentrates on the programs provided by Taylor UUCP.
Taylor UUCP is a complete UUCP package. It is covered by the GNU Public License, which means that the source code is always available. It is composed of several programs; most of the names of these programs are based on earlier UUCP packages.
uucp
uucp program is used to copy file between systems. It is
similar to the standard Unix cp program, except that you can
refer to a file on a remote system by using `system!' before the
file name. For example, to copy the file `notes.txt' to the system
`airs', you would say `uucp notes.txt airs!~/notes.txt'. In
this example `~' is used to name the UUCP public directory on
`airs'.
uux
uux program is used to request a program to be executed on a
remote system. This is how mail and news are transferred over UUCP. As
with uucp, programs and files on remote systems may be named by
using `system!'. For example, to run the rnews program on
`airs' passing it standard input, you would say `uux -
airs!rnews'. The `-' means to read standard input and set things
up such that when rnews runs on `airs' it will receive the
same standard input.
Neither uucp nor uux actually do any work immediately.
Instead, they queue up requests for later processing. They then start a
daemon process which processes the requests and calls up the appropriate
systems. Normally the system will also start the daemon periodically to
check if there is any work to be done. The advantage of this approach
is that it all happens automatically. You don't have to sit around
waiting for the files to be transferred. The disadvantage is that if
anything goes wrong it might be a while before anybody notices.
uustat
uustat program does many things. By default it will simply
list all the jobs you have queued with uucp or uux that
have not yet been processed. You can use uustat to remove any of
your jobs from the queue. You can also it use it to show the status of
the UUCP system in various ways, such as showing the connection status
of all the remote systems your system knows about. The system
administrator can use uustat to automatically discard old jobs
while sending mail to the user who requested them.
uuname
uuname program by default lists all the remote systems your
system knows about. You can also use it to get the name of your local
system. It is mostly useful for shell scripts.
uulog
uulog program can be used to display entries in the UUCP log
file. It can select the entries for a particular system or a particular
user. You can use it to see what has happened to your queued jobs in
the past.
uuto
uupick
uuto is a simple shell script interface to uucp. It will
transfer a file, or the contents of a directory, to a remote system, and
notify a particular user on the remote system when it arrives. The
remote user can then retrieve the file(s) with uupick.
cu
cu program can be used to call up another system and
communicate with it as though you were directly connected. It can also
do simple file transfers, though it does not provide any error checking.
These eight programs just described, uucp, uux,
uuto, uupick, uustat, uuname, uulog,
and cu are the user programs provided by Taylor UUCP.
uucp, uux, and uuto add requests to the work queue,
uupick extracts files from the UUCP public directory,
uustat examines the work queue, uuname examines the
configuration files, uulog examines the log files, and cu
just uses the UUCP configuration files.
The real work is actually done by two daemon processes, which are normally run automatically rather than by a user.
uucico
uucico daemon is the program which actually calls the remote
system and transfers files and requests. uucico is normally
started automatically by uucp and uux. Most systems will
also start it periodically to make sure that all work requests are
handled. uucico checks the queue to see what work needs to be
done, and then calls the appropriate systems. If the call fails,
perhaps because the phone line is busy, uucico leaves the
requests in the queue and goes on to the next system to call. It is
also possible to force uucico to call a remote system even if
there is no work to be done for it, so that it can pick up any work that
may be queued up remotely.
uuxqt
uuxqt daemon processes execution requests made by the
uux program on remote systems. It also processes requests made
on the local system which require files from a remote system. It is
normally started by uucico.
Suppose you, on the system `bantam', want to copy a file to the
system `airs'. You would run the uucp command locally, with
a command like `uucp notes.txt airs!~/notes.txt'. This would queue
up a request on `bantam' for `airs', and would then start the
uucico daemon. uucico would see that there was a request
for `airs' and attempt to call it. When the call succeeded,
another copy of uucico would be started on `airs'. The two
copies of uucico would tell each other what they had to do and
transfer the file from `bantam' to `airs'. When the file
transfer was complete the uucico on `airs' would move it
into the UUCP public directory.
UUCP is often used to transfer mail. This is normally done
automatically by mailer programs. When `bantam' has a mail message
to send to `ian' at `airs', it executes `uux - airs!rmail
ian' and writes the mail message to the uux process as standard
input. The uux program, running on `bantam', will read the
standard input and store it, as well as the rmail request itself,
on the work queue for `airs'. uux will then start the
uucico daemon. The uucico daemon will call up
`airs', just as in the uucp example, and transfer the work
request and the mail message. The uucico daemon on `airs'
will put the files on a local work queue. When the communication
session is over, the uucico daemon on `airs' will start the
uuxqt daemon. uuxqt will see the request to run, and will
run `rmail ian' with the mail message as standard input. The
rmail program, which is not part of the UUCP package, is then
responsible for either putting the message in the right mailbox on
`airs' or forwarding the message on to another system.
Taylor UUCP comes with a few other programs that are useful when installing and configuring UUCP.
uuchk
uuchk program reads the UUCP configuration files and displays
a rather lengthy description of what it finds. This is useful when
configuring UUCP to make certain that the UUCP package will do what you
expect it to do.
uuconv
uuconv program can be used to convert UUCP configuration
files from one support format to another. This can be useful for
administrators converting from an older UUCP. Taylor UUCP is able to
read and use old configuration file formats, but some new features can
not be selected using the old formats.
uusched
uusched script is just provided for compatibility with older
UUCP releases. It starts uucico to call, one at a time, all the
systems for which work has been queued.
tstuu
tstuu program is a test harness for the UUCP package, which
will help ensure that it has been configured and compiled correctly. It
does not test everything, however. It only runs on Unix systems which
support Berkeley style pseudo-terminals or STREAMS style
pseudo-terminals. It can be useful when initially installing Taylor
UUCP.