[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Bakul Shah]

On Wed, 09 May 2018 22:53:01 -0600 Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> > What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the
> > day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...
> 
> I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews.
> 
> The best that I can tell is that they are simply the messages that need
> to be sent written into a single file that is then transferred via some
> mechanism, ftp being a common one.
> 
> It looks like it might be the output of nntpsend or send-nntp.  Or
> perhaps output of downstream / related UUCP commands.
> 
> I often see it mentioned in close proximity of DNews.

From dnews manual

Sucking in UUCP or Satellite articles

  DNEWS can read UUCP bag files in standard rnews format,
  these are often used by satellite systems, the satellite
  receiver software may write 'uucp' files to a directory on
  your system, dnews can then automatically scan and read in
  items that appear in this directory. To read these files
  just specify in dnews.conf the directory and file names that
  DNews should scan, e.g. in dnews.conf

I have a vague memory of some folks (Mark Horton?) sending usenet
data in the unused portion satellite TV signal (stargate?).

Ah, this must be it!:

https://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/http://www.stargate.com/history.html