Re: how to connect UUCP nodes in the 21st century?

On 2025-02-09, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:

On 2/8/25 23:49, Juancho wrote:

What is the point of this? I mean, UUCP is/was used primarily
for remote login and to transfer files, which both are native
functionalities of SSH.

>
Consider you have three systems; A, B, and C, connected like this:
>
[A]---[B]---[C]
>
Now consider that A and C are separated by sufficient distance that
there isn't a network between them.  Finally consider B to be a notebook
that can travel between A and C.
>
UUCP makes it trivial to transfer a file from A to C or vice versa even
though there isn't end-to-end connectivity between A and C.
>
This is one of the uses for UUCP's store-and-forward networking.
>
Now consider using SSH to communicate between A & B to carry the UUCP
traffic and similarly between B & C.
>
SSH provides encrypted and authenticated transport that UUCP can ride
across.
>
I can send a file from A to C with one command.  SSH et al can't do that
because there is a lack of end-to-end communications.
>
The other thing that UUCP over SSH provides is asynchronous operations.
I can cause UUCP to transfer the file in very short order and move on
with things.  Conversely SSH commands ten to be blocking and require
other methods to not hijack the controlling terminal.
>

This might be a very late post, "necroposting", but I've been recently
playing around with NNCP, which is described as being to UUCP what SSH
is to Telnet.  It works quite similar to UUCP, but has encrpytion built
into it so no need for an SSH tunnel (though one can be used if you wish).

More information here
https://www.complete.org/nncp/

and the NNCP home page
https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/index.html

Your scenario though, how often does that happen?  I actually find NNCP
more useful at home, when I may want t send a file from my laptop to my
desktop, or vice versa, but they both aren't on at the same time.  I
have a small raspberrypi server which is always on for other purposes.
That can serve as point [B] in an NNCP set up.