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From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ab.ca>
Organization: The Frobozz Magic Homing Pigeon Company
To: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>
Cc: arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Summary of List of things to move from main tree to ports 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 16 Feb 2001 23:22:17 PST."
             <200102170722.f1H7MHm20405@earth.backplane.com> 
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:59:43 -0700
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>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> writes:

    Matt> 	Robert Watson suggests, and others agree that the best
    Matt> way to handle UUCP is to change the NO_UUCP make.conf option
    Matt> into a BUILD_UUCP make.conf option.  I would interject that,
    Matt> in addition to that, we should not create the uucp directory
    Matt> hierarchy unless uucp is selected in make.conf (i.e. not
    Matt> create /var/spool/uucppublic, a directory which defaults to
    Matt> modes 777, by default).

Even if you do install UUCP, there's no requirement for this
directory to exist.

    Matt> Robert Watson also makes the point
    Matt> about the suid/sgid nature of many uucp binaries, and I and
    Matt> others will attest to the fact that UUCP is simply not
    Matt> maintained anymore.  That is a dangerous combination to have
    Matt> installed in the system by default.

So if a maintainer is found there is no longer a reason to remove
UUCP from the base, yes?

    Matt> Despite Terry's waxing poetic about
    Matt> UUCP's dialup capabilities, every soul I know (except maybe
    Matt> Terry) who has ever used UUCP in the past no longer does
    Matt> (and I should know: I wrote AmigaUUCP!).

I use it. Constantly. Over dialup and TCP. As do a number of sites
I'm affiliated with.

    Matt> However, if those
    Matt> people are going to make a big deal about it, I suppose we
    Matt> can take the intermediate step of having a BUILD_UUCP
    Matt> make.conf (opt-in) option for the next few years.

Hey, WE aren't making the big deal. YOU are the one talking about
yanking out a perfectly functional piece of the OS.

The justification for removing UUCP is stated to be:

    It's not maintained, and it's full of security holes.

I'll agree with the first point. I'm not convinced of the second
(nor am I ruling it out).

Let me address the first point by stepping forward and volunteering
to be maintainer of the UUCP code. I've been using/debugging/enhancing
UUCP since 1985, so it's not a big deal.

Presuming that happens, I have ideas for addressing the second
point. E.g.: Much of the set[ug]uid-ness in UUCP can be eliminated by
using IPC mechanisms to communicate between the user-land commands and
the backend spooling system.

Well?

--lyndon

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