[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

Does anyone know why UUCP "bag" files are called "bag"?

Seeing as this relates to unix-to-unix-copy, I figured that someone on 
TUHS might have an idea.

Thanks in advance.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> On May 9, 2018, at 8:49 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know why UUCP "bag" files are called "bag"?

What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the 
> day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...

I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews.

The best that I can tell is that they are simply the messages that need 
to be sent written into a single file that is then transferred via some 
mechanism, ftp being a common one.

It looks like it might be the output of nntpsend or send-nntp.  Or 
perhaps output of downstream / related UUCP commands.

I often see it mentioned in close proximity of DNews.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Bakul Shah]

On Wed, 09 May 2018 22:53:01 -0600 Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> > What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the
> > day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...
> 
> I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews.
> 
> The best that I can tell is that they are simply the messages that need
> to be sent written into a single file that is then transferred via some
> mechanism, ftp being a common one.
> 
> It looks like it might be the output of nntpsend or send-nntp.  Or
> perhaps output of downstream / related UUCP commands.
> 
> I often see it mentioned in close proximity of DNews.

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[John P. Linderman]

I asked Dave Nowitz, one of the authors of HoneyDanBer UUCP (the others
being Peter Honeyman and Brian Redman) if he knew what bag files were. He
said

Never heard of bag files.
Maybe whoever wrote the linux version did it?


On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 11:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:

>
> > On May 9, 2018, at 8:49 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone know why UUCP "bag" files are called "bag"?
>
> What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the
> day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...
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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Chet Ramey]

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On 5/10/18 12:53 AM, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
> On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
>> What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the
>> day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...
> 
> I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews.

Yes. Bag files are a file format used to transfer news via uucp,
popularized by dnews. I think they originated with satellite news
systems.

"Setting up a UUCP feed into DNEWS
	addsvc -del dposter
	addsvc -add dposter dposter.exe "dposter -dir c:\uucp\in -to news.here.com"
    This will search for files called *.bag in the directory c:\uucp\in
    and after processing them it will delete them.  It's your job to write
    a batch script to get the files in this directory and uncompress them
    if necessary.
    You may also need to add ihave access to your own machine:
         news.here.com:read,post,ihave:::*

    The BAG/UUCP file format is:

    #! rnews nnnn
    ...(article, exactly nnnn bytes, counting each end of line as one byte)
    #! rnews nnnn
    ...(next article)...

Setting up a UUCP feed out of DNEWS
   In newsfeeds.conf add a feed, e.g.
           	site site1.name.uucp
	       		groups *

   Add a service (or process to run xmit and dposter)
	addsvc -add dxmit1 xmit.exe "dxmit1 site.name.edu -at *5 * -uucp
c:\dnews\site1 "

   This will create files called news000n.bag in the directory
c:\dnews\site1  	
   It's your job to uucp copy these to the destination sites, and delete them.
   If you want you can compress them first.  :-)

   The format of the file is:

    #! rnews nnnn
    ...(article, exactly nnnn bytes, counting each end of line as one byte)
    #! rnews nnnn
    ...(next article)..."


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/10/2018 08:25 AM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> Yes. Bag files are a file format used to transfer news via uucp, 
> popularized by dnews. I think they originated with satellite news systems.

This seems to be exactly the topic that I'm asking about.

Unfortunately it doesn't hint at why the files are called "bag" files.

I have seen documentation that indicates that they had the ".bag" file 
extension.  But that in and of itself doesn't offer any clue as to why 
that extension was chosen.

Hence the question of "why".  ;-)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Mary Ann Horton]

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Stargate did not use anything called "bags".  I just checked the source 
code to confirm.

It also didn't use D news.  Stargate required B news.

Remember - Stargate was in the 1987 time frame.  Googling for Dnews 
turns up a CNet page saying it was released in 2004.

     Mary Ann


On 05/09/2018 10:03 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Wed, 09 May 2018 22:53:01 -0600 Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>> On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
>>> What are they to begin with?  Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the
>>> day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ...
>> I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews.
>>
>> The best that I can tell is that they are simply the messages that need
>> to be sent written into a single file that is then transferred via some
>> mechanism, ftp being a common one.
>>
>> It looks like it might be the output of nntpsend or send-nntp.  Or
>> perhaps output of downstream / related UUCP commands.
>>
>> I often see it mentioned in close proximity of DNews.
>  From dnews manual
>
> Sucking in UUCP or Satellite articles
>
>    DNEWS can read UUCP bag files in standard rnews format,
>    these are often used by satellite systems, the satellite
>    receiver software may write 'uucp' files to a directory on
>    your system, dnews can then automatically scan and read in
>    items that appear in this directory. To read these files
>    just specify in dnews.conf the directory and file names that
>    DNews should scan, e.g. in dnews.conf
>
> I have a vague memory of some folks (Mark Horton?) sending usenet
> data in the unused portion satellite TV signal (stargate?).
>
> Ah, this must be it!:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/http://www.stargate.com/history.html

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Dan Cross]

On Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:28 AM Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:

> On 05/10/2018 08:25 AM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> > Yes. Bag files are a file format used to transfer news via uucp,
> > popularized by dnews. I think they originated with satellite news
> systems.
>
> This seems to be exactly the topic that I'm asking about.
>
> Unfortunately it doesn't hint at why the files are called "bag" files.
>

Totally hazarding a guess, but I'd imagine the etymology comes from a news
bag, as in the thing slung over the should and hauled around by the
neighborhood kid who delivers newspapers in the morning (that holds the
to-be-delivered news).

        - Dan C.
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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Chet Ramey]

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On 5/10/18 11:46 AM, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
> Stargate did not use anything called "bags".  I just checked the source
> code to confirm.
> 
> It also didn't use D news.  Stargate required B news.

There are many other satellite internet providers that have appeared since
stargate. For instance:

http://www.infostar.de/knowhow/satfeed.txt

The dnews documentation references them:

"DNEWS can read UUCP bag files in standard rnews format, these are often
used by satellite systems,
the satellite receiver software may write 'uucp' files to a directory on
your system, dnews can then
automatically scan and read in items that appear in this directory."

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet at case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/10/2018 10:03 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
> Totally hazarding a guess, but I'd imagine the etymology comes from a 
> news bag, as in the thing slung over the should and hauled around by the 
> neighborhood kid who delivers newspapers in the morning (that holds the 
> to-be-delivered news).

That makes sense and is a news analog of what I was thinking for email 
over UUCP, the old mail bags that trains used to pick up and drop off, 
or otherwise used in bulk mail transport.

I just haven't been able to find much.  Further what I've found is more 
speculatory than anything else.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> On May 10, 2018, at 7:10 AM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I asked Dave Nowitz, one of the authors of HoneyDanBer UUCP (the others being Peter Honeyman and Brian Redman) if he knew what bag files were. He said
> 
> Never heard of bag files.

We always referred to them as "rnews batches," since that's what they were.

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[John P. Linderman]

So calling them "uucp bag files" is akin to calling something an "ed editor
file" because the ed editor was able to update them?

On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:

>
> > On May 10, 2018, at 7:10 AM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I asked Dave Nowitz, one of the authors of HoneyDanBer UUCP (the others
> being Peter Honeyman and Brian Redman) if he knew what bag files were. He
> said
> >
> > Never heard of bag files.
>
> We always referred to them as "rnews batches," since that's what they were.
>
>
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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/10/2018 05:38 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> We always referred to them as "rnews batches," since that's what they were.

Not if there's also email / commands / files transfers in the batch.  ;-)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/10/2018 06:24 PM, John P. Linderman wrote:
> So calling them "uucp bag files" is akin to calling something an "ed 
> editor file" because the ed editor was able to update them?

I frequently hear of something referred to as "a (Microsoft) Word 
{document,file}".

They are a bag of mail / news / remote commands / file transfers that 
are used by UUCP.

I'm not saying it's correct or not.  I'm just saying it's what I 
frequently hear them referred to as.

I was hoping that someone has some sort of authoritative information as 
to why they were called "bag".



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> On May 10, 2018, at 8:42 PM, Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> On 05/10/2018 05:38 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
>> We always referred to them as "rnews batches," since that's what they were.
> 
> Not if there's also email / commands / files transfers in the batch.  ;-)

UUCP would transfer many batch jobs in a single session, Each job was a single command.  So you would have a mix of 'uux remote!rmail' and 'uux remote!rnews' all stacked up in the job queue to be transferred and executed on the remote host.

'uucp' and 'uux' just created remote batch jobs in a queue directory.  When 'uucico' eventually fired off, it would send the command files over, along with any associated data files.

You could 'uucp' and 'uux' anything you liked, modulo restrictions placed upon you by the administrators of the local and remote hosts.

--lyndon

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

On 05/10/2018 09:58 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> UUCP would transfer many batch jobs in a single session, Each job was 
> a single command.  So you would have a mix of 'uux remote!rmail' and 
> 'uux remote!rnews' all stacked up in the job queue to be transferred 
> and executed on the remote host.

Agreed.

Those were all discrete jobs and associated files in the UUCP queue.

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.

At least that's my understanding.

This bag would then be transferred some means out of band.

The last time I did this, someone would periodically ftp the bag files 
off of the server.  (I don't remember why he wanted bag files instead of 
standard UUCP.)

I've heard of people using bag file(s) to put news (et al) onto a flash 
drive / tape and sneaker net it across to other disconnected systems 
where the process was done in reverse.

> 'uucp' and 'uux' just created remote batch jobs in a queue directory. 
> When 'uucico' eventually fired off, it would send the command files over, 
> along with any associated data files.

That's typical UUCP.  That's distinctly different than my understanding 
of bag files.

> You could 'uucp' and 'uux' anything you liked, modulo restrictions placed 
> upon you by the administrators of the local and remote hosts.

Yep.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[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

[TUHS] UUCP "bag" files

[Grant Taylor]

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On 05/10/2018 10:18 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
> 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.

Well, I don't know what to say.  After a LOT of research, extracting old 
archives, digging through a LOT of things, I can only come to the 
conclusion that what have been called "bag" files in the circles that 
I've traveled in are in fact the output of batcher, thus standard "#! 
rnews <length>" files.

I think part of my confusion was that I was working with using UUCP at 
the same time to transport files via sneaker net using something similar 
to batcher / rnews files.  I guess I conflated the two things.

I'm sorry for the confusion.

> There were no "bags."

They might not have been a different format (like I thought) but there 
were most definitely referred to as "bag" files in the circles that I've 
traveled.

I have repeatedly found reference to them, around DNews, and being 
called "bag" files because of the ".bag" file extension that they had.

I haven't been able to find anything to indicate if the nickname came 
from the file extension or if the file extension came from the nickname.

chicken ("bag") <-> egg (.bag extension) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you all for your input.

I'm sorry for the confusion.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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