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* [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon?
@ 2019-10-20  3:56 John Goerzen
  2019-10-22 11:32 ` Sergey Matveev
  2019-11-15 17:40 ` Sergey Matveev
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: John Goerzen @ 2019-10-20  3:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: nncp-devel

Hi,

One of the neat properties of Taylor UUCP is that one can run the thing
over just about anything.  I'm not saying modem support would be helpful
in NNCP, but I wonder if a transport that takes a pipe could be added?
I'm thinking of situations in which firewall ports aren't necessarily
open, but other methods may be.  For instance:

neigh foo:
  addrs:
    main: "| ssh foo nncp-daemon -pipe"

Of course, this would permit methods other than ssh as well.  Here I
think of things like low-bandwidth radio links, etc.

The -pipe option above may be very similar, or even identical, to
-inetd, I would imagine.

Why not nncp-bundle?  Well, a couple reasons; the two big ones being not
being resumable and not having a positive acknowledgment of being
received on the other end.

One other reason for doing this might be to facilitate independent
installations on a system (see my other message regarding user/group
ownership and permissions).  Say you have a "main" nncp on a system,
running out of /var/spool/nncp, but you want individual users on the
system to not necessarily have to sudo or use other weird tricks to use
it.  You could set up local neighbors like so:

neigh:
  user1:
    addrs:
       main: "| sudo -Hu user1 nncp-daemin -cfg /home/user1/nncp.yaml -pipe"

and user1 could presumably send everything via the local main with a TCP
connection or something.  This prevents the hassle of having to figure
out how to run an instance for every local user.

(As a random aside, should the log file be rotated by the usual system
logfile rotation tools?)

Thanks again!

- John

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread

* Re: [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon?
  2019-10-20  3:56 [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon? John Goerzen
@ 2019-10-22 11:32 ` Sergey Matveev
  2019-11-15 17:40 ` Sergey Matveev
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Sergey Matveev @ 2019-10-22 11:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: nncp-devel

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Greetings, again!

*** John Goerzen [2019-10-19 22:56]:
>One of the neat properties of Taylor UUCP is that one can run the thing
>over just about anything.  I'm not saying modem support would be helpful
>in NNCP, but I wonder if a transport that takes a pipe could be added?

Actually I also thought about serial connections support, like direct
COM-to-COM ports connection, but you have to add some reliable
transmission layer above that connection, because it is not errorprone.
But currently no job was done in that direction. At least currently you
can use something like lrzsz utilities to sync nncp-xfer-friendly
directories.

>  addrs:
>    main: "| ssh foo nncp-daemon -pipe"
>The -pipe option above may be very similar, or even identical, to
>-inetd, I would imagine.

This is the second time people asking about that feature :-). Well,
previously I thought that one could easily forward TCP-ports using
something like ssh -L and run nncp-call on locally forwarded port.
However it would also require nncp-daemon running on remote side. Well,
I agree that it becomes pretty complicated and not always you can deal
with with TCP connection.

I am convinced that working on stdin/stdout-based connection and calling
commands like "| something" would be useful and greatly helpful.
Currently, especially because of two weeks vacation and main work, I can
not give exact time estimate when I will implement all of this, but I
hope in 2019-11 in should be completed.

>Why not nncp-bundle?  Well, a couple reasons; the two big ones being not
>being resumable and not having a positive acknowledgment of being
>received on the other end.

You are right, nncp-bundle is for pretty different tasks: personally I
use it to write data on LTO-tapes, CD/DVD-RWs and directly to HDDs
(without the need to create filesystem).

>(As a random aside, should the log file be rotated by the usual system
>logfile rotation tools?)

Yes. In FreeBSD port I maintain I provide example (trivial and obvious)
newsyslog configuration file for that task:
https://git.cypherpunks.ru/cgit.cgi/nncp.git/tree/ports/nncp/files/nncp.newsyslog.conf.sample
Even if NNCP is running under separate users, then you can easily rotate
files by running newsyslog with end-user cron. I do that for rotating
logfiles of fetchmail and maildrop, for example.

>Thanks again!

Thanks for pointing useful issues needs to be fixed and done!

-- 
Sergey Matveev (http://www.stargrave.org/)
OpenPGP: CF60 E89A 5923 1E76 E263  6422 AE1A 8109 E498 57EF

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread

* Re: [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon?
  2019-10-20  3:56 [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon? John Goerzen
  2019-10-22 11:32 ` Sergey Matveev
@ 2019-11-15 17:40 ` Sergey Matveev
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Sergey Matveev @ 2019-11-15 17:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: nncp-devel

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Greetings!

*** John Goerzen [2019-10-19 22:56]:
>neigh foo:
>  addrs:
>    main: "| ssh foo nncp-daemon -pipe"

I have added that ability and now it can call external command like that:

    addrs: {
      ...
      proxied: "|ssh remote.host nncp-daemon -inetd"
    }

-- 
Sergey Matveev (http://www.stargrave.org/)
OpenPGP: CF60 E89A 5923 1E76 E263  6422 AE1A 8109 E498 57EF

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread

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2019-10-20  3:56 [nncp-devel] Pipe option for addrs / nncp-daemon? John Goerzen
2019-10-22 11:32 ` Sergey Matveev
2019-11-15 17:40 ` Sergey Matveev