12 ms·

Dataforge UUCP

172 points by stargrave 8y ago

kunguru 8y ago
some examples of this in use would be good, the documentation looks a bit sparse.
tyingq 8y ago
Interesting. I had no idea someone had layered SSH and certificate auth on top of UUCP. Used UUCP a lot back in the day to push software updates out to customer machines over dial up.
- rocky1138 8y ago
  I'd love to read more about these stories. Do you blog?
  - tyingq 8y ago
    I should, but no. It was a company that sold software to hospitals that would integrate software/servers from different departments via a protocol called HL7. Hospitals were not generally on the internet in the early 90's. So, we would do a week on site installing an AIX box and the software, do a few integrations, etc. Before we left, we'd install a 56k modem. UUCP was handy because you could push files and run remote commands on a batch schedule without a lot of scripting. We did have some clients that had more complicated setups where we would have to resort to SLIP (serial line IP) and more traditional scripts/rsh/etc. All terribly insecure, with plain text passwords in files...or worse, ".rhosts" files.
    - stevekemp 8y ago
      Same here UUCP setup to trigger syncing of nightly billing runs on SCO(!) Unixware servers. All the code was written as a combination of Microfocus COBOL and hairy shell-scripts. I recall we had a lot of random SSH-tunnels being held open via keep-alive-pings, and SLIP was definitely something I had to use.
- UncleSlacky 8y ago
  Same here - I'd send compiled binaries out overnight via uucp over a WorldBlazer modem; for the non-x86 based systems I'd send out vi changes scripts via cu and apply the changes to the remote copy of the source code before compiling it. Sometimes I had to uuencode the x86 binaries and send them via cu when uucp wouldn't work (chat scripts were often tricky to get right).
blfr 8y ago
I remember uucpssh.org[1] which I had bookmarked for a while but didn't get around to setting up before it closed down. Now it resolves to a spam website. Sad! [1] http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/March2004/article330.shtml http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/March2004/article330.shtml
nickodell 8y ago
Seems interesting, but unfortunately the leaf guide is empty. https://uucp.dataforge.tk/~uucp/wiki/index.php?n=Main.LeafNode https://uucp.dataforge.tk/~uucp/wiki/index.php?n=Main.LeafNo...
- aewens 8y ago
  Hey, I'm one of the Tier 1 nodes for the Dataforge UUCP project. It's currently a work-in-progress as the Tier 1 guide was only just recently completed. If you are interested in joining as a lead node, you can get help setting it up in #uucp on the tilde.chat network.
icedchai 8y ago
Interesting. I used to have a UUCP email and news feed back in the 90's, for the BBS I ran in high school.
no_identd 8y ago
I can haz UUCP+Briar using (in order of preference) GNUnet/i2p/Tor as the underlay with full end to end PGP encryption, Web & Chain of trust & custody attestation, via fully bootstrappable & replicable builds? No? Meh. Guess it'll take another 7 years until crypto & libre take off.
- 1996 8y ago
  This. You are downvoted but your technical critique is spot on. Throw in Monero to pay for services and you've got a great technological stack possible right now, while something like that at the time of the cryptonomicon was just a dream. It could be a cool project if it took advantages of all the pieces of technology we now have that they didn't have back then - PGP was a late addition, replicable builds not a concern, tor and cryptocurrencies yet to be invented.
  - no_identd 8y ago
    Thanks. I suspect the downvotes come about due to the rather tongue-in-cheek way I started my comment with, albeit I wanna avoid speculating about reasoning behind downvotes. Speaking of Monero & paying for services: GNUnet has the GNU Taler project. While not applicable to the same use cases to which Monero applies, it fits into a related niche very much in need of filling.
kseistrup 8y ago
I ran AmigaUUCP way back when. I feel tempted to set up UUCP again…
catern 8y ago
Somewhat in a similar vein (in that it provides an NNTP interface and provides for decentralized distribution of newsgroups/mailing lists) is public-inbox [0] which is used by kernel.org for mirroring LKML; it's quite straightforward to get running and has a great technical foundation on git. [0] https://public-inbox.org https://public-inbox.org
mmaunder 8y ago
I suspect this is #1 on HN because we are all very interested in ideas that enable decentralized publishing. The trouble with uucp is that it wont take long for a tier 1 node to disconnect a leaf for being the wrong kind of freedom fighter.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
NelsonMinar 8y ago
LOL kids these days. I remember when we first got Internet access and didn't have to batch up a UUCP download late at night any more, what a great convenience! Also things like URLs are remarkably useful; finding a file via UUCP was quite a hassle. I mean as an art project goes, sure, why not? But it's hard to imagine UUCP offers any practical advantages unless you literally don't have an always-on Internet connection. For more nostalgia, enjoy the UUCP maps: http://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/ http://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/
- huslage 8y ago
  This is the way I felt too. I used to do lots of UUCP back in the late 80s, but that fell away as soon as I got "real IP" SLIP dialup. I did use UUCP a few years ago over some HF radios. It still has some uses, but the usability of it is horrid.
- mmaunder 8y ago
  In South Africa where I grew up, we had the entire country's internet hanging off a single dialup UUCP gateway at Rhodes University in Grahamstown from 1988 until 1991. In 91 they replaced the dialup UUCP link with a 9600kbps leased line. Only universities had access. We got our first commercial ISP in 1993.
  - throw0101a 8y ago
    > [ZA] got our first commercial ISP in 1993. Interesting 'doc' from the Internet Society on the effort from a few years ago on Internet exchange points (IXPs): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFv-9iPwwLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFv-9iPwwLE
- fsagx 8y ago
  The first place I worked at out of college was on the cutting edge of technology when everyone, from the president to the janitor, got an email address. The 1200b UUCP connection for a staff of 30 sometimes caused some bottlenecks. I remember getting grief from the boss when whomever he was talking to on the phone wasn't getting his emails. Turns out the receptionist was receiving a 1MB (!) attachment at the same time
kokey 8y ago
UUCP is one of those good things that many early ISP providers overlooked, You had companies with an e-mail server that would dial up to the internet to send and receive e-mail and would get a dynamic IP address. This would be no problem for UUCP, but since many newcomers to the internet didn't know it they would use some clunky dynamic DNS system instead. Also if the connection dropped there was no 'resume' feature if this happened during the sending or receiving of a large e-mail, so it would have to start sending or receiving that e-mail all over again.
rbc 8y ago
I used to run a leaf node in Hawaii with an AT&T 3B1 using its internal 1200 baud modem. My upstream was Pegasus Information Systems, run by by a guy named Richard Foulk.
praetor242 8y ago
Hello! I'm Wes (aka; praetor), the founder of the UUCP project ! I'm humbled my project reached the front page of HN and has generated some interest. Yes. I do apologize for the documentation being sparse. I'm developing the Tier 1 provisioning scripts, and documenting at the same time. Plus, unfortunately, I have a full-time life. But once I finish the Tier 1 stuff, I can delegate duties out to those with an interest :D Yup. It's all run via SSH. The preferred server is Taylor UUCP, which is super flexible. I've sent an e-mail to the developer, Ian Taylor, to hopefully revive that project and breath some life into UUCP. It's a fantastically resilient protocol and will run over damned near anything. We've even had some talk of running UUCP over ham radio links!!! All the Tier 1 hosts are mesh interconnected, so even if one goes down, it doesn't take huge swathes of the network with it. With how the Internet is shaping up to be, if Google goes down, it's taking a huge piece of the network with it. This is really intended to reawaken the DIY ethos the Internet was founded on. Mostly public nixes and tilde servers, but anyone with some dedication can be a Tier 1. We've kinda democratized it that way. And no, you don't have to be the "right kind of freedom fighter". The Tier 1 operators have a gentleman's agreement to let anything pass through their node to the broader network unless it's something like CP or flagrantly against the law (or spam) It's an exciting project! It really is a network for the modern nerd, and is ripe for all sorts of projects! Please join us on IRC @ irc.tilde.chat or subscribe to the project mailing list at uucp@lists.tildeverse.org See ya on the network! :D
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
  To me, merely encrypting the transport layer via SSH is far from secure, especially when the network is used by "hackers" and "freedom fighters". Today, if a network wants to be immune from tracking by design, it should officially support to be accessed from anonymous networks. The UUCP protocol is perfect for relatively high-latency, low-bandwidth anonymous network, like Tor or i2p (Particularly, i2p by itself is a great project, the only issue is the latency of the network is too high for HTTP), it would be great if some Tier 1 hosts can be accessed from Tor/i2p via a raw TCP socket (without SSH, since it's unnecessary and increases overhead in these networks). Illegal content and spam can be a problem, only peering to reputation hosts can solve the problem at large.
jbotz 8y ago
What are "tilde networks"?
- kragen 8y ago
  Tilde.club explains at http://tilde.club/~faq/ http://tilde.club/~faq/.
  - Crontab 8y ago
    Also worth checking the Dataforge UUCP site list. https://uucp.dataforge.tk/sites.html https://uucp.dataforge.tk/sites.html
- jamestomasino 8y ago
  These specific tilde servers are summarized by https://tildeverse.org https://tildeverse.org as well

172 points by stargrave 8y ago

some examples of this in use would be good, the documentation looks a bit sparse.

Interesting. I had no idea someone had layered SSH and certificate auth on top of UUCP. Used UUCP a lot back in the day to push software updates out to customer machines over dial up.

rocky1138 8y ago
I'd love to read more about these stories. Do you blog?
- tyingq 8y ago
  I should, but no. It was a company that sold software to hospitals that would integrate software/servers from different departments via a protocol called HL7. Hospitals were not generally on the internet in the early 90's. So, we would do a week on site installing an AIX box and the software, do a few integrations, etc. Before we left, we'd install a 56k modem. UUCP was handy because you could push files and run remote commands on a batch schedule without a lot of scripting. We did have some clients that had more complicated setups where we would have to resort to SLIP (serial line IP) and more traditional scripts/rsh/etc. All terribly insecure, with plain text passwords in files...or worse, ".rhosts" files.
  - stevekemp 8y ago
    Same here UUCP setup to trigger syncing of nightly billing runs on SCO(!) Unixware servers. All the code was written as a combination of Microfocus COBOL and hairy shell-scripts. I recall we had a lot of random SSH-tunnels being held open via keep-alive-pings, and SLIP was definitely something I had to use.
UncleSlacky 8y ago
Same here - I'd send compiled binaries out overnight via uucp over a WorldBlazer modem; for the non-x86 based systems I'd send out vi changes scripts via cu and apply the changes to the remote copy of the source code before compiling it. Sometimes I had to uuencode the x86 binaries and send them via cu when uucp wouldn't work (chat scripts were often tricky to get right).

blfr 8y ago

I remember uucpssh.org[1] which I had bookmarked for a while but didn't get around to setting up before it closed down. Now it resolves to a spam website. Sad! [1] http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/March2004/article330.shtml http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/March2004/article330.shtml

nickodell 8y ago

Seems interesting, but unfortunately the leaf guide is empty. https://uucp.dataforge.tk/~uucp/wiki/index.php?n=Main.LeafNode https://uucp.dataforge.tk/~uucp/wiki/index.php?n=Main.LeafNo...

aewens 8y ago
Hey, I'm one of the Tier 1 nodes for the Dataforge UUCP project. It's currently a work-in-progress as the Tier 1 guide was only just recently completed. If you are interested in joining as a lead node, you can get help setting it up in #uucp on the tilde.chat network.

icedchai 8y ago

Interesting. I used to have a UUCP email and news feed back in the 90's, for the BBS I ran in high school.

no_identd 8y ago

I can haz UUCP+Briar using (in order of preference) GNUnet/i2p/Tor as the underlay with full end to end PGP encryption, Web & Chain of trust & custody attestation, via fully bootstrappable & replicable builds? No? Meh. Guess it'll take another 7 years until crypto & libre take off.

1996 8y ago
This. You are downvoted but your technical critique is spot on. Throw in Monero to pay for services and you've got a great technological stack possible right now, while something like that at the time of the cryptonomicon was just a dream. It could be a cool project if it took advantages of all the pieces of technology we now have that they didn't have back then - PGP was a late addition, replicable builds not a concern, tor and cryptocurrencies yet to be invented.
- no_identd 8y ago
  Thanks. I suspect the downvotes come about due to the rather tongue-in-cheek way I started my comment with, albeit I wanna avoid speculating about reasoning behind downvotes. Speaking of Monero & paying for services: GNUnet has the GNU Taler project. While not applicable to the same use cases to which Monero applies, it fits into a related niche very much in need of filling.

kseistrup 8y ago

I ran AmigaUUCP way back when. I feel tempted to set up UUCP again…

catern 8y ago

Somewhat in a similar vein (in that it provides an NNTP interface and provides for decentralized distribution of newsgroups/mailing lists) is public-inbox [0] which is used by kernel.org for mirroring LKML; it's quite straightforward to get running and has a great technical foundation on git. [0] https://public-inbox.org https://public-inbox.org

mmaunder 8y ago

I suspect this is #1 on HN because we are all very interested in ideas that enable decentralized publishing. The trouble with uucp is that it wont take long for a tier 1 node to disconnect a leaf for being the wrong kind of freedom fighter.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

NelsonMinar 8y ago

LOL kids these days. I remember when we first got Internet access and didn't have to batch up a UUCP download late at night any more, what a great convenience! Also things like URLs are remarkably useful; finding a file via UUCP was quite a hassle. I mean as an art project goes, sure, why not? But it's hard to imagine UUCP offers any practical advantages unless you literally don't have an always-on Internet connection. For more nostalgia, enjoy the UUCP maps: http://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/ http://olduse.net/blog/current_usenet_map/

huslage 8y ago
This is the way I felt too. I used to do lots of UUCP back in the late 80s, but that fell away as soon as I got "real IP" SLIP dialup. I did use UUCP a few years ago over some HF radios. It still has some uses, but the usability of it is horrid.
mmaunder 8y ago
In South Africa where I grew up, we had the entire country's internet hanging off a single dialup UUCP gateway at Rhodes University in Grahamstown from 1988 until 1991. In 91 they replaced the dialup UUCP link with a 9600kbps leased line. Only universities had access. We got our first commercial ISP in 1993.
- throw0101a 8y ago
  > [ZA] got our first commercial ISP in 1993. Interesting 'doc' from the Internet Society on the effort from a few years ago on Internet exchange points (IXPs): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFv-9iPwwLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFv-9iPwwLE
fsagx 8y ago
The first place I worked at out of college was on the cutting edge of technology when everyone, from the president to the janitor, got an email address. The 1200b UUCP connection for a staff of 30 sometimes caused some bottlenecks. I remember getting grief from the boss when whomever he was talking to on the phone wasn't getting his emails. Turns out the receptionist was receiving a 1MB (!) attachment at the same time

kokey 8y ago

UUCP is one of those good things that many early ISP providers overlooked, You had companies with an e-mail server that would dial up to the internet to send and receive e-mail and would get a dynamic IP address. This would be no problem for UUCP, but since many newcomers to the internet didn't know it they would use some clunky dynamic DNS system instead. Also if the connection dropped there was no 'resume' feature if this happened during the sending or receiving of a large e-mail, so it would have to start sending or receiving that e-mail all over again.

rbc 8y ago

I used to run a leaf node in Hawaii with an AT&T 3B1 using its internal 1200 baud modem. My upstream was Pegasus Information Systems, run by by a guy named Richard Foulk.

praetor242 8y ago

Hello! I'm Wes (aka; praetor), the founder of the UUCP project ! I'm humbled my project reached the front page of HN and has generated some interest. Yes. I do apologize for the documentation being sparse. I'm developing the Tier 1 provisioning scripts, and documenting at the same time. Plus, unfortunately, I have a full-time life. But once I finish the Tier 1 stuff, I can delegate duties out to those with an interest :D Yup. It's all run via SSH. The preferred server is Taylor UUCP, which is super flexible. I've sent an e-mail to the developer, Ian Taylor, to hopefully revive that project and breath some life into UUCP. It's a fantastically resilient protocol and will run over damned near anything. We've even had some talk of running UUCP over ham radio links!!! All the Tier 1 hosts are mesh interconnected, so even if one goes down, it doesn't take huge swathes of the network with it. With how the Internet is shaping up to be, if Google goes down, it's taking a huge piece of the network with it. This is really intended to reawaken the DIY ethos the Internet was founded on. Mostly public nixes and tilde servers, but anyone with some dedication can be a Tier 1. We've kinda democratized it that way. And no, you don't have to be the "right kind of freedom fighter". The Tier 1 operators have a gentleman's agreement to let anything pass through their node to the broader network unless it's something like CP or flagrantly against the law (or spam) It's an exciting project! It really is a network for the modern nerd, and is ripe for all sorts of projects! Please join us on IRC @ irc.tilde.chat or subscribe to the project mailing list at uucp@lists.tildeverse.org See ya on the network! :D

bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
To me, merely encrypting the transport layer via SSH is far from secure, especially when the network is used by "hackers" and "freedom fighters". Today, if a network wants to be immune from tracking by design, it should officially support to be accessed from anonymous networks. The UUCP protocol is perfect for relatively high-latency, low-bandwidth anonymous network, like Tor or i2p (Particularly, i2p by itself is a great project, the only issue is the latency of the network is too high for HTTP), it would be great if some Tier 1 hosts can be accessed from Tor/i2p via a raw TCP socket (without SSH, since it's unnecessary and increases overhead in these networks). Illegal content and spam can be a problem, only peering to reputation hosts can solve the problem at large.

jbotz 8y ago

What are "tilde networks"?

kragen 8y ago
Tilde.club explains at http://tilde.club/~faq/ http://tilde.club/~faq/.
- Crontab 8y ago
  Also worth checking the Dataforge UUCP site list. https://uucp.dataforge.tk/sites.html https://uucp.dataforge.tk/sites.html
jamestomasino 8y ago
These specific tilde servers are summarized by https://tildeverse.org https://tildeverse.org as well