Xref: utzoo news.admin:2159 news.sysadmin:677 comp.mail.uucp:1303
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!ucbvax!unisoft!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Very odd control message causes news failure, uuxqt queue hang.
Message-ID: <4578@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 13 May 88 08:50:46 GMT
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 42

This news article showed up today on hoptoad, causing a failure when C
news tried to mail a reply to the address in the Path: line (because
mail uses uux, and Sun's uux can't handle long command lines due to
statically allocated buffers):

	Path: hoptoad!pacbell!ames!ncar!oddjob!nosuch!sitesas!these!madeup!namesin!hereexist!ijust!addedthem!tomakethe!pathline!aslongas!theonein!theother!testmessage!thatisent!atthesame!timeas!thisone!iamsure!youseewhy!oddjob.uchicago.edu!bbtest1
	From: bbtest1@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford)
	Newsgroups: news.admin.ctl
	Subject: version
	Message-ID: <test-2@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
	Date: 12 May 88 18:22:47 GMT
	Control: version
	Reply-To: bbtest2@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford)
	Distribution: usa
	Organization: University of Chicago
	Lines: 0
	Approved: Matt

Later, reply mail came through from one of the sites that we forwarded
the article to (their uux has been fixed, I guess).  But this caused
our uuxqt to coredump as long as the X.file for the message was in the
execute queue.  Another statically allocated buffer!  When uuxqt
coredumps, it leaves around the /usr/spool/uucp/LCK.XQT file, so no
uuxqt's will run again until someone manually removes this file (at
which point the next uuxqt will coredump again).  You have to move the
bad X. file out of the spool directory before you can process the rest
of the incoming news and mail.  Here's what it looked like on hoptoad:

	U daemon utzoo
	F D.hoptoadB5d75
	I D.hoptoadB5d75
	C rmail pacbell!ames!ncar!oddjob!nosuch!sitesas!these!madeup!namesin!hereexist!ijust!addedthem!tomakethe!pathline!aslongas!theonein!theother!testmessage!thatisent!atthesame!timeas!thisone!iamsure!youseewhy!oddjob.uchicago.edu!bbtest1 

Looks like a fun terrorist trick, it will certainly stop uucp execution
on all the Suns on the net...

Maybe Matt can explain the point of this; iamsure!idont!seewhy.

	John Gilmore
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu        gnu@toad.com
"Use the Source, Luke...."