Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!uvm-gen!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!zorch!pacbell!gladys!bakerst!mtune!icus!lenny
From: lenny@icus.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Re: HDB
Summary: Not trying to start another HDB war.
Keywords: How good?  What's gained?
Message-ID: <302@icus.UUCP>
Date: 20 Mar 88 06:13:41 GMT
References: <4039@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: lenny@icus.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano)
Distribution: unix-pc
Organization: ICUS Computer Group, Islip, NY
Lines: 57

In article <4039@ihlpf.ATT.COM> gmark@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Stewart) writes:
|>I've gotten a copy of Honey-DanBer UUCP.  I see that it appears to
|>display the blocks transmitted as it works, which is nice.  However,
|>what are the other advantages?  I'm told it's "not even worth fixing"
|>the standard UUCP after having HDB.  Is HDB more dependable?  (I've
|>got a devil of a time with long transmissions/receipts over
|>phone lines from home.  Are any UUCPs "restartable" such that they
|>can figure out where they left off if interrupted?)  Thanks in advance.
|>
|>

I don't want to start another why doesn't AT&T give out HDB war... but
to answer this question HDB is much better than the standard UUCP that
comes with the UNIX PC.

Some of the advantages gained are:

	o  Nicer user interface.  You can tell what jobs are in the queue
	   with a "uustat -a"  and it gives you the COMPLETE detail, not
	   just the JOB QUEUED message.

	o  Much better administrative control, ability to handle permissions
	   of the uucico processes a lot more extensively.

	o  Ability to schedule uucp Polls, without the aid of crontabs to
	   trigger the uucico for a specific system.

	o  Ability to handle complex uucp requests, like 
	   "uucp file nodea!nodeb!nodec!~/"  as long as you have permission
	   to do this at all the intermediate sites.  And they are all running
	   HDB.

	o  More complex Systems entries are capable of being created.

	o  Much better error recovery.  It is smart enough to check the
	   FREE space and send back a NAK to the system to abort sending
	   the files.

	o  uucp-cleanup is more complete, it gives explicit details (once
	   a week or more if desired) of UUCP denied messages, etc..


HDB seems to be *MORE* dependable (sorry folks) than the generic UUCP.
As for restartable, the uucp's (I think all do) when the call the 
system again, after abnormally aborting the transfer, will resend the
current job it was working on, and all subsequent jobs.  It won't RESEND
the ones it sent already.

							-Lenny
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