Path: utzoo!dretor!dciem!nrcaer!julie!mcr
From: mcr@julie.UUCP (Michael Richardson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: The login: prompt.
Keywords: uucp !unix !getty login
Message-ID: <0724.AA0724@julie>
Date: 7 Mar 89 01:17:48 GMT
Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp
Organization: Sandleman Software Works' Debugging Department, Ottawa, ON
Lines: 56


  I am in the process of writing a "Front Door/Sea Dog/Binkley"-like
program (for the Amiga of course) that sits in front of a bbs and does mail
transfer sessions with non-human callers. In Unix terms we are talking
about a getty(8) with built in X and Z modem.

  My "vision" is of a local dialup network of computers that would be connected
together, making everyone a "point" (none of that dial/budy/autodial stuff)
and also to have connections to the outside world. (The problems of what
this would do to net bandwidth has not been overlooked. I can imagine
subscribing to a group and then subscribing to individual threads --- like
a glorified kill file. Also, Distribution: would be a hard and fast
rule!!!)

  I've done enough uucp connection configuring (but never with HDB uucp,
only BSD or mickey mouse micro uucp stuff.) to realise that most
system administrators already know how to do "ogin:" <name> "sword:" <password>"
stuff, but is there any real reason that this has to be done?

  Under Fidonet, a (horrible kludge) _special_ character (0xAE I think) is
sent to start the base level protocol. (No security) When someone came
up with the idea of doing protocol negotiation, a new _special_
sync character was defined (of course that is extendible---but only with
a sixteen bit mask.)

  I don't want to put up a "login:" prompt and then look for sync's
or login names, confusing the heck out of human callers when they have to
enter "bbs" or they enter their name and then I pull the bbs (or whatever---
I'm not specific) up. I don't to have anything to do with "user logs" or
passwd files.

  I suspect that it would simply make sense to put up---
"UUCP?" and if I receive a "Y" then print a "login:" otherwise
drop into the bbs (after checking for the fidonet [yuck---Zmodem excepted]
protocols)

  Does anyone know if this is going to present any big problems to any
known sites that I might care about? (i.e. IBM 360 running a uucp written
in JCL... :-))

  Thanks!








--

  :!mcr!:
  Michael Richardson                     Amiga
                                  v--------+
 UUCP: uunet!attcan!lsuc!nrcaer!julie!mcr  | INTERNET mcr@doe.carleton.ca
 Fido: Michael Richardson @ 1:163/109.10<--+ Alter @ 7:483/109.10