[COFF] UUCP on macOS / *BSD

[Grant Taylor]

On 6/29/20 9:53 AM, Arrigo Triulzi via COFF wrote:
> I run UUCP on OpenBSD for some very remote sites connected with 
> satellite modems (using UUCP-over-IP, not pure UUCP, where the dial-up 
> script initiates the UUCP exchange). UUCP was recently removed from 
> the base OpenBSD distribution but is still available as a package.

Do you by chance recall what UUCP software was being used?  Was it by 
chance Taylor UUCP?  Or was it some other UUCP package in OpenBSD?

> I honestly cannot see it work on macOS because I cannot even remotely 
> imagine Apple having any interest whatsoever in ensuring that it works 
> with the various changes they made to “standard Unix” (launchd, 
> sandboxing, read-only /, etc.).

I'll be the first to admit that it was a very ... convoluted process to 
get it to work on macOS (X) Catalina 10.15.5.

1)  Boot into recovery mode.
2)  Log into my local account.
3)  Disable System Integrity Protection.
4)  Boot into normal mode.
5)  Remount the root file system read-write:  mount -uw /
6)  Update /usr/share/uucp/* as necessary.
7)  Boot into recovery mode.
8)  Enable SIP.

I did have to enable Set UID & GID on some of the UUCP binaries.  -  I 
don't know if this is a macOS thing that's broken or if it's a 
difference in how UUCP operates on BSD or something else I'm ignorant of.

Currently, it seems like UUCP is largely working, save for the fact that 
users other than _uucp (yes, including the leading underscore) can't 
access the SSH key file that's used as part of the pipe transport.

I should document what I'm doing, both as notes for my self (self 
serving) and for others (good of the community).

> Are you trying to configure dial-up UUCP or UUCP-over-IP with uucpd?

I'm trying to configure UUCP-over-SSH.  It's probably closer to 
UUCP-over-modem than it is UUCP-over-IP (TCP).  The ""modem pipe is the 
ssh command which remotely connects to the destination host (using keys 
to authenticate) and launching uucico through the SSH connection STDIO.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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