this is getting a little off topic but ... > UUCP isnt complicated. It is completely straigforward and the correct > solution to multiple-user offline email, which ETRN is NOT an solution.
i disagree, i think it is. :-) i have yet to meet someone who isn't already quite technical that has sucessfully setup a uucp connection without significant help. especially since uucp over tcp accounts are even harder to find then normal uucp accounts, this means that you have to setup chat scripts to dial up, there are several different config files which need to match and work together etc etc. > > complicated because it's designed to be so much more then just an offline > > mail protocol. > > *Aehm* UUCP is not a MAIL protocol. It is a file copy protocol which is > extended with some kind of "Take this file x with protocol y and after > receiving to z" ... err, my point exactly. pretty much all uucp is used for *now* is as an offline mail protocol, but it was designed to be used for much more then that. > But offline mail is laptop specific. You have 2 choices. Fetchmail > compatible pop-3 fetching and uucp. even though etrn is kinda an abomination it does work well so long as the provider has tweaked timeout values. i resisted providing etrn service for a long time because i thought it was ugly but it actually works pretty well if you're careful, has wide client support (really doesn't even need client support), has wide demand, and is very simple to implement and debug. > This is NOT a solution. The splitting of the one POP-3 account into > multiple unix accounts is NOT standardized and mostly not working as the > normal mail envelope gets lost (There are workarounds available). i agree that it's a hack, but it works, and every isp i've ever dealt with supports it. > But the "normal" laptop user wont to "disconnected file system" things, > the mail case is much more common. agreed. adam.
