freebsd/gnu/libexec/uucp/TODO

This is a list of things to do for the Taylor UUCP package.  Please
feel free to work on any of them.  You may want to check with me first
to make sure that nobody else is working on them as well.

Some of these are my thoughts, but most are suggestions from other
people; I have tried to give credit.  They are in the order I received
them; the missing numbers have already been implemented.

Just because something is on the list doesn't mean that I necessarily
think it is a good idea.  It does mean that I think it's worth
thinking about.

2.

John Cowan <cowan@snark.thyrsus.com> says:

>I think you should accept a broader range of time specifications.
>Consider using getdate() (from your handy Usenet news source code)
>with its high-powered yacc parser.

Of course, getdate() accepts a single date, but we want a range.  A
better syntax would be certainly be nice.

9.

Gordon Burditt <gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org> warns about modifications
to the TZ environment variable, to fool uucico into dialing out at an
inappropriate time.

10.

Gordon Burditt <gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org> says:

>(4) Less important, because few people will have this problem, is a 
>port-specific dialcodes file.  Why?  Well, one system I had was connected
>to 2 inside lines "dial 9 for outside line", and one outside line (which
>doesn't want the 9).  A number of the systems called were "inside", so
>you didn't add the 9 on those lines dialing from inside, but you did add 
>"390" to the 4-digit number if you dialed it via "outside".  Also not 
>unheard of are systems with 2 outside lines that are local to different 
>area codes, or one local outside line and one WATS line (which MUST
>have an area code).
>Example:
>	inside-line Dialcodes		outside-line Dialcodes
>	pbx	""			pbx	"390"
>	local	"9"			local	""
>	nyc	"9-1212"		nyc	"1212"

12.

Ralf E. Stranzenbach <ralf@reswi.ruhr.de> says:

>It would be nice to also have the option of running a shell script each time  
>uucico connects/disconnects a systen. I do not mean shell scripts for dial/in.  
>I would like to do some accounting and batching when the connection  
>establishes.

13.

les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:

>>local-send /usr/spool/uucppublic !/usr/spool/uucpublic/private
>>
>>The directories are searched from left to right, and the last one to
>>match determines whether the file may be sent or not.  This is
>>slightly more general than NOWRITE, since it permits a public
>>directory within a private directory within a public directory,
>>although probably nobody will ever want that.
>
>Interesting... The obvious enhancement is to generalize to shell-like
>wild cards for the READ/WRITE/COMMANDS entries.

14.

Should there be a way for chat scripts to specify the parity to
generate?  I don't think there's much point to specifying what parity
to accept.

17.

The -b and -s switches to uux are not implemented by uuxqt.

18.

If we are supposed to call a system back, we should do it immediately
rather than merely queuing up an empty command file.

22.

Add an ftp port type which uses anonymous ftp rather than any of the
UUCP protocols to do file transfers.  This would allow ftp work to be
done late at night, and allow neighbors of cooperative Internet sites
to use UUCP forwarding for anonymous FTP.

32.

It would be nice if uucico could sleep until a line was available.
This is complicated by the possibility of wanting to wait for any of
several different lines, and one would really want some sort of
semaphore function to do it right.  If the available lines could be
sorted, then each could be assigned to a byte in a line lock file.
Looking for a line could be done by sleeping on a read lock on all
possible lines.  Once it came through, write locks would be attempted.
If they all failed, somebody else snuck in, so you would sleep on a
read lock again.  This isn't great because a process could be starved,
but it might be better than nothing.

This could be tied in to uucp and uux, such that they wouldn't
actually fire up uucico unless a line was known to be available; an
additional switch would be used to fire up uucico anyhow (or one could
switch the default behaviour and the switch).

So how do you sort the lines?  You could just use the index in the
port (or Devices) file, but what if multiple ports used the same
physical device?  Hmmm.

43.

David Nugent: it would be nice to be able to set debugging, log, and
statistics files on a site by site basis.
Brian Murrell: heck, set those files on a port by port basis as well.

74.

Yanek Martinson: allow each system to independently choose whether to
permit shell execution.

81.

Marty Shannon: log reason for dial failure (chat-fail string) in
.Status file.

83.

Switch between 'M' and 'S' correctly in the BNU log file output.

86.

Les Mikesell: allow a separate program to be specified to handle the
communications with a particular system.

105.

T. William Wells: close and open the Debug file after each file
transfer.  Alternatively, cycle through a series of Debug file names
every 1000 lines or so.

106.

Marty Shannon: add a time command for ports, to specify when they may
be used.

115.

T. William Wells: new options for uustat:
	-i display job ids only
Also, there should perhaps be a configuration option to request uustat
to only display jobs submitted by the user running uustat, except for
root and uucp.

117.

Marc Unangst: provide some way to change the debugging level of a
running uucico.  T. William Wells suggests having it read a file to
change arbitrary configuration information, although obviously one has
to be careful of what gets changed while a connection is active.

120.

Jarmo Raiha: new chat-fail commands: one to not update the status file
and require a retry wait, and one to permit the string to occur a few
times before reporting an error.

124.

Peter da Silva: perhaps there should be a ``chat-end-program'' command
to let a program be run after the initial handshake has been completed
and the protocol has been selected and turned on.  This would let
people run stty to change their terminal parameters.

128.

Richard Stallman: have an interactive program to set up a chat script.
It would let you type directly to the port, recording what you type as
send strings and recording what comes back from the other side as
expect strings.

129.

Use POSIX fcntl locks when possible instead of creating a lock file.

138.

T. William Wells: BNU apparently uses a file named A.whatever to hold
the line number reached in current C. file processing.  This is a
hack, and won't work right with size control anyhow, but
fsysdep_did_work could, for example, clobber the first byte in the
line to a # or something to mark that it had been finished.  Still a
hack, but a better one.

139.

Patrick Smith: incorporate patches to generate full debugging traces
with less debugging file overhead.  The debugging file repeats too
much information at great length right now--not good.

141.

Franc,ois Pinard: batch up pauses and delays in chat scripts and do
them all at once in a single system call.  This is particularly useful
for pauses on systems which don't support subsecond sleeps.  For
everything else it's a fairly minor optimization.

142.

Franc,ois Pinard: give uustat an option to requeue jobs to another
system.  This only makes a lot of sense for rmail executions, but it's
fairly easy to do for any type of command.  I think uucico does all
the file checking needed to ensure that this doesn't break security,
but that should be double-checked.

144.

T. William Wells: add a -g option to uucico to permit specifying the
maximum grade to be transferred at that time.  This could restrict the
timegrade command further, but should not be permitted to override it.

145.

T. William Wells: if uucico or uuxqt get started with bad arguments,
put an indication in the log file since stderr may be /dev/null.

146.

Richard Todd: it would be nice to sometimes be able to request the
other side to turn on debugging.

147.

Bart Schaefer: some more possible options for uucico:
    -R reverse roles (hangup immediately).  Not too exciting.
    some method to restrict calling to particular systems.

148.

Jarmo Raiha: some method to control the work queue at the remote end.
This could get awfully general, though.

149.

The interaction of the time command and defaults can be confusing,
since any time command in the actual system entry, even a fairly
specific one, will wipe out the default entry.  Not sure what can be
done about this.

150.

Jarmo Raiha: should there be some way to specify modem initialization
strings when uucico is hanging on a port with -l or -e?  This would
presumably require a new type of chat script associated with a dialer.

151.

Petri Helenius: log complete CONNECT string reported by modem, so that
the baud rate is recorded in the log file.

152.

Marc Evans: let the protocol selection be based on the CONNECT string,
so that different protocols could be selected based on what type of
connection was made.

153.

Chris Lewis: provide a signal to get a core dump even on systems which
won't do core dumps if the uid is not the euid.  One could catch a
signal, call setuid (getuid ()), and then raise the signal again.
Unfortunately the core dump has to wind up in a directory which is
world writable, so that the process is able to create the core file,
but is not world readable, since that would permit anybody to read the
core dump file and extract private information from it.

154.

Les Mikesell: write a new version of dial.o, with provisions for
running a chat script.

155.

Scott Blachowicz: perhaps there should be some way to telling uucico
to not log certain errors.  This could get fairly complex, though.

156.

Franc,ois Pinard: have uustat -m report the time of the last
successful conversation when reporting a failure.

158.

Thomas Fischer: should there be a way to completely disable an entry
in the sys, port or dial file?  Such as a ``disable'' command?

159.

Petri Helenius: when uuxqt -s is invoked, lock uuxqt for the system so
that only one uuxqt is invoked per system.  If the -c option is used,
don't lock on a per system basis, and ignore any per system locks
(regardless of -s).  If neither option is used, respect existing
system and command locks, and do any other type of file.

161.

Scott Blachowicz: provide some sort of include mechanism for the
configuration files.

164.

Ed Carp: preserve files if uuxqt execution fails.

165.

Marc Sheldon: use exit codes from <sysexits.h> in uux and uucp.

166.

Chip Salzenberg: allow chat failure strings to specify a retry time.

168.

Jose A. Manas: allow a maximum connect time, after which we try to
hang up the connection.  This requires a protocol extension, since
there's no way to force the other side to hang up.  The best we can do
without an extension is refuse to send any new jobs ourselves.  Of
course, we could just drop the connection.

169.

Franc,ois Pinard: when given uustat -k00FC, check each possible job ID
and use it if there is an unambiguous one.

170.

T. William Wells: if ! HAVE_SETREUID && ! HAVE_SAVED_SETUID, fork a
subprocesses to revoke setuid and read the file over a pipe.

171.

Provide some option to have the internal uuconf functions not start
with an underscore.

172.

T. William Wells: have some way to configure the parity for cu.

173.

Gert Doering: uuchk should display unknown system information.

175.

T. William Wells:
Cu will not let itself be interrupted before the connection is
established. If the chat script doesn't write something, cu does
something odd, I've forgotten exactly what. Cu takes an
inordinate amount of time after the line drops to exit. Somebody,
cu, I think, but maybe uucico, drops dtr twice sometimes. Again,
somebody will attempt to write after a hangup signal has been
received. Once a hangup has been received, I/O should not be
attempted. Among other things this will save the bacon of those
who have brain damaged serial drivers (FAS, sigh, is among them)
that don't handle output properly on a dropped line.

Me:
Note that sometimes you do want to write to a line after receiving a
hangup signal.  For example, you might want to use ATZ to reset a
modem.

176.

Hans-Dieter Doll: provide some way (another escape sequence) to pass
the protocol to a chat-program.  Or, allow the protocol as an argument
to the chat script command, which is more general, but maybe a bit too
fancy.

177.

Nickolay Saukh: use a default port for cu, you can just do ``cu
number''.

180.

Nickolay Saukh: if we have received a partial file, request the remote
system to start sending from that point.  We currently accept SVR4
style remote file positioning requests, but we do not generate them.

181.

Mark Powell: provide some way to restrict file transfer by size as
well as grade?  One way would be to let uux select the grade based on
the file size.

182.

Mark Powell: permit using multiple timetables in a single time
statement.

183.

Optionally check for interrupts in fcopy_file, since it can take a
long time to copy a file named in a uucp request.

185.

A syntax error in a command received from the remote system should not
hold up the queue.  Unfortunately, I don't know what can be done
except deny the command and report it.  Reporting a garbled command
error should report the command correctly, rather than just the first
character.

186.

Franc,ois Pinard: have an option to control nostop vs. stop on the cu
command line.

187.

Fix the notion of %nostop to be SVID compatible.

188.

Frank Conrad: provide a means to set the strip mode for a port, to
make it easy to use it from cu.

189.

Marc Unangst: there should be a way to specify that a system should
only be called if there are jobs of a certain grade, but if the system
is called then jobs of any grade should be transferred.  This
basically means splitting the ``timegrade'' command into two commands:
``place-call-timegrade'' and ``transfer-timegrade''.  Or maybe another
optional argument to ``timegrade'':
    timegrade grade time-string [retry] [transfer-any]
not to mention
    time time-string [retry] [transfer-any]
Or maybe a separate command for a system or port like
    transfer-any BOOL

190.

Chip Salzenberg: it would be really nice if uucico could automatically
figure out when it could use an E command, so that uux didn't have to
generate it and so that uucico could use with other versions of uux.
Unfortunately, it would require uucico to read the execution file to
see if it were suitable; this would be complex, but it would probably
be worth it since normally the execution file would wind up not being
sent.  Of course, the current method works too; it's just harder to
combine with other versions of UUCP.

191.

Brian J. Murrell: should there be a way to cu a specific alternate?

192.

Andrew A. Chernov: Perhaps cu -pport system should be able to try
different alternates for the system, because there might be different
phone numbers to try.

193.

Brian J. Murrell: it would be nice to be able to ^C a cu chat script
if you know it's going to fail.  Right now you have to use ^\.

194.

Steven S. Dick: have some way to force uucico off the phone at a
certain time.  If that is done, it might be cool to have some way to
predict how long a file transfer will take, and not do it if it will
take too long.  But, if doing file restart, you can just quit and then
pick it up later.

195.

Franc,ois Pinard: if the disk fills up, or some other error occurs,
while receiving a file, perhaps it would make sense to turn the
connection around immediately and see if the other side had anything
to do, and then try again later.  This would require a protocol
extension.  I don't know if it's worth it.  The code should be checked
to see how well it handles a disk full situation.

197.

Try alternate IP addresses if there are any.

198.

Lele Gaifax: mention the device in Stats, and provide some way to
associate the entry in Log with the entry in Stats.

199.

Michael Richardson: provide some way to turn on parity for the login
chat, since some systems apparently require it.  Provide some way for
cu to control parity after connecting.

200.

Chip Salzenberg: add max-remote-debug to config.

201.

Gert Doering: change the timeout message in chat scripts to reflect
which chat script timed out (dialer or login).

202.

Bill Foote: have uuchk check whether a system is defined more than
once.

203.

Eric Ziegast: allow specification of the minimum grade to receive, as
well as the maximum grade.  Probably sending a second character after
the -pM argument would work fine.

204.

Tom Rushworth: perhaps there should be some program which can be used
to retrieve the current spool directory.  Perhaps on option on uustat.

207.

James B. O'Connor: use additional messages in the status file when
placing a call, such as Dialing, Chatting, and the like.  Slightly
less efficient.

208.

When checking whether a file may be received into a directory, perhaps
uucico should check using the real user ID rather than insisting that
the directory be world writable.  This should be a policy.h parameter.
This would enable sites which use different uids for each incoming
UUCP login to have better control over security.

209.

Jon Vos: add an alias command for ports.

210.

Joe Wells: I'd like to have a way so that if the dial chat fails due
to "NO CARRIER", in addition to this log message:

  ERROR: Chat script failed: Got "NO\sCARRIER"

I would get another log message right next to it that would look like
this:

  ERROR: Chat script failed: 5 "RRING" strings seen

Ian: I doubt this is worth implementing in uucico, but it might make
sense for an external, or otherwise more independent and controllable,
chat program.

211.

Joe Wells: In some cases it would be nice to be able to change the set
of chat-fail strings in the middle of the chat script.  Personally, I
think this is too complex for the simple chat scripts currently
implemented.

212.

Joe Wells: There should be an option to all programs directing them to
send all debugging output to the log file.  This would just involve
calling ulog_to_file at some point just after reporting any usage
messages.

213.

Joe Wells: There should be a way to specify the execution directory
used by uuxqt.  This would avoid certain sorts of permissions
problems.  Some mechanism would still be needed for using multiple
directories.

214.

Joe Wells: uuto should be documented.

215.

Joe Wells: Perhaps it should be possible to use multiple spool
directories.  It would be a lot of work, though.

216.

Joe Wells: It should be possible to specify only one of complete or
abort.

217.

Dan Everhart: It would be nice if the chat-fail string could affect
the error message reported by uustat, so that uustat could say
something ``Line was busy''.

218.

Andrew A. Chernov: Add a chat-char-delay xx configuration parameter,
which has the effect of adding \p after each character, with delay xx.
This is to accommodate modems which can't accept command characters at
a given baud rate.

219.

Gert Doering: Provide some mechanism for specifying the maximum length
of a call.  Convenient for anonymous UUCP sites.

220.

Joe Wells: There should be some way for "cu" to obey user commands
during the dial chat.  Right now, the only thing the user can do is
send signals (e.g. type Control-C).  This leads to user complaints
that "cu" is not obeying its documentation.

221.

Joe Wells: Right now, if there is any failure in the dial or login
chat scripts, the remote system alternate is skipped even though the
cause of the failure may have been the local serial port or modem.
"uucico" will not try another modem with the same remote system
alternate.  If the remote system only has one alternate, then it is
skipped entirely.

Thus, there should be a way to specify that when certain expect
strings are not seen or certain chat-fail strings are seen that the
port is skipped instead of the remote system alternate.

222.

Richard H. Gumpertz: Support pipelines in uuxqt.  Right now they are
only supported if uux puts in an 'e' line (which it does) and shell
executions are permitted (which they normally are not).  It would be
possible to permit restricted pipelines by handling the pipe character
specially and making sure all commands in the pipeline were permitted.

223.

Bill Sommerfeld: When dialing out, set the status to DIALING rather
than CONNECTION CLOSED.  Setting the status takes a bit of time; it's
hard to tell where the right break-even point is.

224.

Joe Wells: Keep track of the last successful incoming call separately
from the last successful outgoing call.  Currently the two times are
both put together in the status file.

225.

Joe Wells: It would be nice if uustat would provide a way to avoid
bouncing mail that it sent itself, to avoid sending notification
e-mail for notification e-mail.  I can't think of a mechanism, though
(using a special grade for uustat does not work because most mail
programs do not provide a mechanism for passing a grade through to
uux).

226.

Joe Wells: It would be nice if uustat could know whether it had sent
mail for a particular job, to avoid generating multiple messages for
the job.

227.

Joe Wells: It would be nice if dialcode suffixes were supported, as
well as prefixes.

228.

Joe Wells: It would be nice to support another spool directory scheme
which split stuff up more to avoid very large directories.  This would
be most useful for the files which are named in C. and X. files,
rather than for the C. and X. files themselves (since C. and X. files
are rarely looked up by name).  Basically, some sort of partition of
the D. directory is called for.

229.

Joe Wells: ``It would be nice if the exit sequence of "cu", where it
runs the complete chat script and then disconnects could be aborted
without disconnecting.  (Yes, I know, this is a strange desire.)  It
would be nice to be able to reinvoke the dial chat by user command in
"cu".  It would be nice to be able to invoke an arbitrary named chat
script in "cu".''

230.

Kevin Johnson: Provide some mechanism such that all requests to a
particular system were automatically forwarded through some other
system.  This would be useful to hide details of a non-strongly-
connected network, particularly if the details were subject to change.

231.

Gert Doering: Perhaps it should be possible to -r the default for uucp
and uux.  This would require adding a new option to force the
invocation of uucico.

232.

Mark Davies: spaces are not handled correctly in the -a argument of
uux.  If an E command is generated, the requestor address is not
quoted correctly, nor is it parsed correctly.  If an execution file is
generated, the R line is not parsed correctly.

233.

Emmanuel Mogenet: provide some mechanism for a maximum number of
garbage bytes during a chat script before giving up.

234.

Scott Ballantyne: The address for a TCP port should be separate from
the phone number, so that a TCP dialer can use \D.

235.

Peter Wemm: The 'i' protocol default parameters do not work at 2400
baud, because the time it takes to transfer half the packets is less
than the timeout time.  Of course people can always change the
parameters, but it would be nice if this were dealt with somehow.

236.

Andrew A. Chernov: Perhaps uuxqt should log when it terminates.

237.

dialer-sequence doesn't really do the right thing.  There is no way to
specify both the TCP address and a phone number.

238.

cu -t doesn't work at all.  It does nothing.

239.

Paul Pryor: Perhaps a service command should be added to the sys and
port files.  This command would be used as ``service cu'' to indicate
that the system or port was only available to cu, not to UUCP.

240.

Tim Iverson: The 'g' and 'i' protocol code tends to parse data packet
headers twice.  It processes them once to find out how large the
packet is, waits for that data to arrive, and then processes the
header again the second time around.  It would be possible to avoid
this by changing the code to be a simple state machine which
remembered where it was in the process of parsing the packet.

241.

Klaus Dahlenburg: Log a more precise reason for failure in the .Status
file: e.g., all ports in use, no matching ports, etc.

242.

Steven S. Dick: It would be helpful if there was a way to get uuchk to
dump the data from ports/dialers/etc that was NOT picked up from the
sys file.  In other words, add some option to scan the port file and
the dial file, presumably using uuconf_find_port for the former and
uuconf_dialer_names for the latter.

243.

Kai Michael Kretschmann: Add a configure option to drop the connection
if jobs are coming in too slowly, indicating a bad connection.