Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: uucp status & dial retries
Keywords: HDB uucp, retries
Message-ID: <5391@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 20 Jan 91 20:45:57 GMT
References: <885@bacchus.esa.oz.au> <1991Jan11.121104.4061@odin.diku.dk> <526@ctycal.UUCP>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 34

>Mine doesn't.  What is `maximum-grade'?

A mechanisms that says "during these times of the day, don't transmit
UUCP jobs with a grade 'worse' than some particular grade".  The SunOS
4.1 UUX(1C) manual page nonwithstanding, "0" seems to be the "best" grade
and "z" seems to be the "worst" grade.

Originally, all the grade of a job did was to specify when it should be
transmitted in a UUCP session; better-grade jobs were transmitted before
worse-grade jobs.

Various versions of UUCP (4.3 or so BSD, some HDB versions done by Peter
Honeyman, but *NOT* the version in S5R3.2 or earlier from AT&T) added
the "maximum grade" mechanism to tell the system that it shouldn't
transmit lower-grade jobs *at all* at certain times.

The grade can be specified with the "-g" flag to the "uucp" command, and
on later versions of UUCP with the "-g" flag to the "uux" command.

For example, mail might be assigned a grade somewhere around "A", while
netnews might be assinged a grade somewhere around "d".  This will, at
minimum, make sure that if both mail and news is queued for a given
site, when a UUCP session is started with that site, the mail will get
sent first.  With the "maximum-grade" mechanism, you can arrange that
the news won't get transferred *at all* during the day, but still pick
up mail.

Two sites both supporting this option are supposed to exchange their
notion of the correct maximum grade; I think the calling site sends the
notion of "maximum grade" it got from the "L.sys" or "Systems" file, and
that becomes the maximum grade for both sites.  Unfortunately, the bug I
mentioned earlier may prevent this from working, and if one of the sites
doesn't know about the "maximum grade" option, it will send all jobs it
has queued up, not just the ones with the right grades.