NAME

uucp − unix to unix copy

SYNOPSIS

uucp [ options ] source-file....  destination-file

DESCRIPTION

uucp copies files named by the source-file arguments to the destination-file argument.  A filename may be a pathname on your machine, or may have the form

system name!pathname

where system name is taken from a list of system names that uucp knows about.  (uucp won’t work with systems whose hostnames contain uppercase letters.)  Shell metacharacters ?∗[] appearing in the pathname part will be expanded on the appropriate system. 

Pathnames may be one of:

(1) a full pathname;

(2) a pathname preceded by ~user; where user is a userid on the specified system and is replaced by that user’s login directory;

(3) a pathname prefixed by ~, where ~ is expanded into the system’s public directory (usually /usr/spool/uucppublic);

(4) a partial pathname, which is prefixed by the current directory. 

If the result is an erroneous pathname for the remote system, the copy will fail.  If the destination-file is a directory, the last part of the source-filename is used. 

uucp preserves execute permissions across the transmission and gives 0666 read and write permissions (see chmod(2)). 

OPTIONS

−a Avoids doing a getwd to find the current directory.  (This is sometimes used for efficiency.) 

−c Uses the source file when copying out rather than copying the file to the spool directory.  (This is the default.) 

−C Copies the source file to the spool directory and transmit the copy. 

−d Makes all necessary directories for the file copy.  (This is the default.) 

−f Does not make intermediate directories for the file copy. 

−g grade Grade is a single letter/number; lower ASCII sequence characters will cause a job to be transmitted earlier during a particular conversation.  Default is ‘n’. By way of comparison, uux(1C) defaults to ‘A’; mail is usually sent at ‘C’. 

−m Sends mail to the requester when the copy is complete. 

−n user Notifies user on remote system (i.e., send user mail) that a file was sent. 

−r Does not start the transfer, just queue the job. 

−s spool Uses spool as the spool directory instead of the default. 

−x debug Turns on the debugging at level debug. 

FILES

/usr/spool/uucp - spool directory
/usr/lib/uucp/∗ - other data and program files

SEE ALSO

uux(1C), mail(1)

D. A. Nowitz and M. E. Lesk, A Dial-Up Network of UNIX Systems.

D. A. Nowitz, Uucp Implementation Description.

WARNING

The domain of remotely accessible files can (and for obvious security reasons, usually should) be severely restricted.  You will very likely not be able to fetch files by pathname; ask a responsible person on the remote system to send them to you.  For the same reasons you will probably not be able to send files to arbitrary pathnames. 

BUGS

All files received by uucp will be owned by the uucp administrator (usually UID 5). 

The −m option will only work sending files or receiving a single file.  (Receiving multiple files specified by special shell characters ?∗[] will not activate the −m option.) 

At present uucp cannot copy to a system several "hops" away, that is, a command of the form

uucp myfile system1!system2!system3!yourfile

is not permitted. Use uusend(1C) instead. 

When invoking uucp from csh(1), the ‘!’ character must be prefixed by the ‘\’ escape to inhibit csh’s history mechanism. (Quotes are not sufficient.) 

uucp refuses to copy a file that does not give read access to “other”; that is, the file must have at least 0444 modes. 

INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS 4.3 BSD  —  November 23, 1988