[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[lyndon@orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg)]

> On May 10, 2018, at 9:09 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> It's my understanding that bag files were an aggregation / collection of what uucico (or something closely related) would typically write to the modem connected to the remote system.  This output was redirected to a single, monolithic file, called a bag.

Yes, but rnews understood batching from day one.  It would have been insane to execute rnews on each and every article sent across.  (I made that mistake in a config file once; that the remote host didn't completely die was a testament to CTIX.)  That's why every news transport batched up multiple articles into a single 'uux remote!rnews' job.  This existed from at least the bnews software, and we always called them "news batches" or similar.

There were no "bags."

But there were patches to BSD's UUCP that allowed rnews batching to take place in a 'streaming' manner, avoiding the need to stack up the data files in /var/spool/uucp.  I remember applying patches to the patches running on 'alberta' (U of Alberta) that solved some backlog problems they were having with downstream sites (one of which was mine).

--lyndon