Welcome to UUCP-Send
--------------------

This package provides an alternative frontend for batching News with
INN for delivering over UUCP.  You can use it instead of the provided
send-uucp script.

The program ``uucpsend'' offers a comfortable way to do news batching
for UUCP connected sited.  The program does not do the batching
itself.  Instead it lets commonly used tools do the work.  However it
controls their behaviour.  Using ``uucpsend'' you can define detailed
how batching for each site shall take place in an easy fashion.

An example

Think of the following files in /etc/news:

    uucpsend.ctl:

    /default/:2000:500:cunbatch:compress:-r -n
    satu:8000:1000:cunbatch:compress:-r -n
    rakastava:5000:1000:zunbatch:gzip:-r -n
    kyllikki:1000:500:gunbatch:gzip -9:-r

    uucpsend.ctl-slowlinks:

    malinconia:1000:200:cunbatch:compress:-r -n
    rakastava:1000:200:cunbatch:compress:-r -n
    intrada:1000:200:cunbatch:compress:-r -n

Assume you also have the following lines in the crontab of the user
``news''.

    5     * * * *          uucpsend rakastava kyllikki luonnotar bardi
    24,54 * * * *          uucpsend satu
    7     1 * * *          uucpsend -f slow

Decoding this shows that the sites rakastava, kyllikki, luonnotar and
bardi are fed once an hour.  These are big sites that get a lot of
stuff.  But they're still handled differently.  While there may be
stored up to 5MB of UUCP data for rakastava, the spool for kyllikki
must not exceed 1MB.  The next two sites, luonnotar and bardi, are not
listed in any uucpsend.ctl file so the default settings are used.
This reads as they may only use up to 2MB of UUCP spool.

The second line in the crontab feeds a very big site that polls this
server quite often and gets a large amount of olds, err news.  Its
spoll directory may store up to 8MB of data while batching takes place
twice an hour.

The last line covers a bunch of slow sites that tend to poll the
server once per night but have only a slow connection.  In my case
this is a non-profit organisation of free radio groups.  Since no
sitenames are specified on the commandline uucpsend loops through the
file and batches for every site.


Compatibility with INN 2
------------------------

This package currently does not run with INN 2.  This is due to the
inavailability of an INN 2 server for the author.  If you are running
uucpsend and would like to switch to INN 2, please test if this
package will continue to work and contact me.

 1. You'll have to fetch the source package and compile a new package
    for INN 2 on your own.

 2. Edit the file paths.h and change _PATH_LOCKS to /var/run/news

 3. Edit the file paths.h and change _PATH_BATCHDIR to
    /var/spool/news/outgoing

 4. Recompile and package

 5. Cross fingers

 6. Install

 7. Find out if it works.


The author
----------

I apologize for writing this tool in 1995 but releasing it in 1998.
However it was linked from my web pages from the beginning.

This package is mentioned publically on the web at

    http://www.infodrom.org/projects/uucpsend/

Please send me comments, patches and good ideas.

Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>

