Hey all, I wanted to know if anyone else has this use case that I used
UUCP for.

For a while I had a WWAN card in one of my ThinkPads, and so I was able to
have internet on the go (but not all the time due to poor service). On
said ThinkPad, I had installed Postfix and UUCP to run a local mail
server, which would then go out to a cheap $5 Contabo VPS I rented, which
would DKIM sign the email and then send it out (also worked inbound too of
course).

I'm curious as to if anyone else used UUCP for this purpose. I like the
delay-tolerant networking and the polling style, because it means that not
everyone has to have a well-known address or always-online machine, only
the gateway does.

Basically: It was perfect for my setup.

I haven't touched the laptop that it was set up on in a while. (I only had
a few trivial things connected to the emails under its domain.)
That's why I used past tense.

Anyways, I'm curious to see what uses anyone else has used for UUCP on
their own machines.

--
Molly A. McCollum
mam@SDF.org

On 6/9/24 04:17, Molly A. McCollum wrote:
> Hey all, I wanted to know if anyone else has this use case that I used
> UUCP for.

I have done this in the past.

> I'm curious as to if anyone else used UUCP for this purpose. I like the
> delay-tolerant networking and the polling style, because it means that
> not everyone has to have a well-known address or always-online machine,
> only the gateway does.

What you call "delay tolerant networking" I refer to as "hop-by-hop"
networking. It is very nice to have, particularly when end-to-end
networking can't be established, much less maintained.

> Anyways, I'm curious to see what uses anyone else has used for UUCP on
> their own machines.

My biggest use case was -- what you called -- delay tolerant networking
to send files between systems I used at home, work, and elsewhere. It
worked particularly well when I was on the road and didn't have IP
connectivity (via port forwards from an unknown location) to systems
inside my home / office network. I could send files via the VPS which
has a connection to my home and office and would relay files through
just fine.

Once tuned, it worked better for large files that took a while to send.
Queue them with uucp, they would go to the Internet gateway quickly
across the LAN and then slowly go out the slow Internet connection while
I was off doing other things having shut the source notebook down.

--
Grant. . . .

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
> On 6/9/24 04:17, Molly A. McCollum wrote:
>> Hey all, I wanted to know if anyone else has this use case that I used
>> UUCP for.
>
> I have done this in the past.
>

yep, and this is exactly the use case I'm setting up on my laptop
right now.

>> I'm curious as to if anyone else used UUCP for this purpose. I like the
>> delay-tolerant networking and the polling style, because it means that
>> not everyone has to have a well-known address or always-online machine,
>> only the gateway does.
>
> What you call "delay tolerant networking" I refer to as "hop-by-hop"
> networking. It is very nice to have, particularly when end-to-end
> networking can't be established, much less maintained.

you could even establish a whole subdomain behind the uucp link
with FQDN's for each machine as far as email is concerned.

UUCP clearly still has it's advantages.

>> Anyways, I'm curious to see what uses anyone else has used for UUCP on
>> their own machines.

we're even setting up a small netnews exchange right now :D

> My biggest use case was -- what you called -- delay tolerant networking
> to send files between systems I used at home, work, and elsewhere. It
> worked particularly well when I was on the road and didn't have IP
> connectivity (via port forwards from an unknown location) to systems
> inside my home / office network. I could send files via the VPS which
> has a connection to my home and office and would relay files through
> just fine.

That's interesting. I don't have a uucp capable machine in the office,
but it's intriguing.

Cheers,

lkh

--
Laurens Kils-Hütten * lkh@sdf-eu.org * @lkh@social.sdfeu.org