From: utzoo!decvax!cca!lee@utexas-11@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: uucp
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.1622
Posted: Thu Jun  3 12:13:09 1982
Received: Fri Jun  4 05:06:29 1982

From: Bill Lee 
Date: 17 May 1982 at 1126-CDT
Does anyone understand why uucp (and uucico) should be setuid and owned
by uucp? This is claimed several times in "Uucp Implementation Description"
by D.A. Nowitz in the Seventh Edition, vol 2b manual. Should the uucp uid
then be the same as the root uid? I don't understand how uucp can copy
files to the spool directory unless the file protection is such that
anyone can read it. And how is uucico able to put incoming files in the
correct place if he doesn't have root privs? I have just brought uucp up
on a PWB system and cannot make things happen correctly unless both programs
are setuid root. In addition, is anyone aware of any hidden zingers in
moving uucp and uucico to PWB other than the stat system call
incompatibility? The ioctl stuff appears to be handled by the ioctl.c code
that comes along with uucp (for the most part although a minor tty.c hack is
needed for 8 bit raw input). Has anybody else done this?

p.s. mine appears to work (i have successfully transferred files between
the PWB system and a v7 machine) in case someone else wants to do this
or know exactly what to do.
-------