.\" Copyright (c) 1986 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\" @(#)L.sys.5 6.1 (Berkeley) 4/24/86
.TH L.SYS 5 "April 24, 1986"
L.sys \- UUCP remote host description file
file is consulted by the UUCP daemon
for information on remote systems.
includes the system name, appropriate times to call, phone numbers, and a
login and password for the remote system.
is thus a privileged file, owned by the UUCP Administrator;
it is accessible only to the Administrator and to the superuser.
describes one connection to one remote host, and has the form:
System Times Caller Class Device/Phone_Number [Expect Send]....
Fields can be separated by any number of blanks or tabs. Lines beginning
with a `#' character are comments; long lines can be continued by appending
a `\\' character to the end of the line.
.IR Device/Phone_Number )
specify the hardware mechanism that is necessary to make a connection
to a remote host, such as a modem or network.
searches from the top down through
file and searches for the first available device with the same
(``Available'' means that the device is ready and not being used
attempts a connection using that device; if
the connection cannot be made (for example, a
dialer gets a busy signal),
tries the next available device. If this also fails, it returns to
to look for another line for the same
is the hostname of the remote system.
Every machine with which this system communicates via UUCP should be listed,
regardless of who calls whom.
will not be permitted a connection.
The local hostname should
appear here for security reasons.
is a comma-separated list of the times of the day and week that
calls are permitted to this
to restrict long distance telephone calls to those times when
rates are lower. List items are constructed as:
\fIkeyword\fPhhmm\fB-\fPhhmm\fB/\fP\fIgrade\fP\fB;\fP\fIretry_time\fP
is required, and must be one of:
Any time, any day of the week.
Any weekday. In addition,
can be used for Monday through Sunday, respectively.
When evening telephone rates are in effect, from 1700 to 0800 Monday
through Friday, and all day Saturday and Sunday.
When nighttime telephone rates are in effect, from 2300 to 0800 Monday
through Friday, all day Saturday, and from 2300 to 1700 Sunday.
.BR Any2300-0800,Sa,Su0800-1700 .
This is a slight modification of
It matches when the USA X.25 carriers have their lower rate period. This
is 1800 to 0700 Monday through Friday, and all day Saturday and Sunday.
Never call; calling into this
is forbidden or impossible.
This is intended for polled connections, where the
remote system calls into the local machine periodically.
This is necessary when one of the machines is lacking
either dial-in or dial-out modems.
subfield provides a time range that modifies the keyword.
in 24-hour time (from 0000 to 2359).
The time range is permitted to "wrap" around midnight, and will behave in
the obvious way. It is invalid to follow the
keywords with a time range.
subfield is optional; if present, it is composed of a `/'
This specifies that only requests of grade
or better will be transferred during this time.
(The grade of a request or job is specified when it is queued by
By convention, mail is sent at grade
and uucp copies are sent at grade
Unfortunately, some sites do not follow these conventions, so it is
subfield is optional; it must be preceded by a `;' (semicolon) and
specifies the time, in minutes, before a failed connection may be
(This restriction is in addition to any constraints imposed by the rest of the
By default, the retry time starts at 10 minutes and gradually increases
at each failure, until after 26 tries
gives up completely (MAX RETRIES). If the retry time is too small,
may run into MAX RETRIES too soon.
is the type of device used:
Automatic call unit or auto-dialing modem such as the Hayes
Smartmodem 1200 or Novation ``Smart Cat''. See
for a list of supported modems.
Direct connect; hardwired line (usually RS-232) to a remote system.
GTE Telenet PC Pursuit. See
for configuration details.
Sytek high-speed dedicated modem port connection.
Berkeley TCP/IP or 3Com UNET connection. These are mutually exclusive.
since all the necessary information is contained in
If several alternate ports or network connections should be tried,
is usually the speed (baud) of the device, typically 300, 1200, or
2400 for ACU devices and 9600 for direct lines.
Valid values are device dependent, and are specified in the
On some devices, the baud may be preceded by a
non-numeric prefix. This is used in
to distinguish among devices that have identical
and baud, but yet are distinctly different. For example, 1200
could refer to all Bell 212-compatible modems, V1200 to
Racal-Vadic modems, and C1200 to CCITT modems, all at 1200 baud.
is the port number (an integer number) or a port name from
that is used to make the connection. For standard Berkeley TCP/IP,
UUCP normally uses port number 540.
field. For ACU devices, this is the phone number to dial.
The number may include: digits
for dialing those symbols on tone telephone lines;
(hyphen) to pause for a moment, typically two to four seconds;
(equal sign) to wait for a second dial tone (implemented as a pause on
many modems). Other characters are modem dependent; generally
standard telephone punctuation characters (such as the slash and
parentheses) are ignored, although
The phone number can be preceded by an alphabetic
string; the string is indexed and converted through the
field contains the name of the device in
that is used to make the connection. There must be a corresponding
For TCP and other network devices,
holds the true network name of the remote system, which may be different
from its UUCP name (although one would hope not).
refer to an arbitrarily long set of strings that
alternately specify what to
to login to the remote system once a physical connection has
been established. A complete set of expect/send strings is referred
.IR "expect/send script" .
The same syntax is used in the
file to interact with the dialer prior to making a connection; there
The complete format for one
\fIexpect\fP\fB-\fP\fItimeout\fP\fB-\fP\fIsend\fP\fB-\fP\fI\
expect\fP\fB-\fP\fItimeout send\fP
is compared against incoming text from the remote host;
is matched. By default, the
is followed by a `\er' (carriage return). If the
string is not matched within
seconds (default 45), then it is assumed that the match failed.
The `\fIexpect\fP\fB-\fP\fIsend\fP\fB-\fP\fIexpect\fP' notation
provides a limited loop mechanism; if the first
string fails to match, then the
string between the hyphens is transmitted, and
string. This can be repeated indefinitely. When the last
hangs up and logs that the connection failed.
The timeout can (optionally) be specified by appending the parameter
`\fB~\fP\fInn\fP' to the expect string, when \fInn\fR is the timeout
Backslash escapes that may be imbedded in the
\eb Generate a 3/10 second BREAK.
\eb\fIn\fP Where \fIn\fP is a single-digit number;
generate an \fIn\fP/10 second BREAK.
\ec Suppress the \er at the end of a \fIsend\fP string.
\ed Delay; pause for 1 second. (\fISend\fR only.)
\exxx Where \fIxxx\fP is an octal constant;
denotes the corresponding ASCII character.
As a special case, an empty pair of double-quotes \fB""\fP in the
string is interpreted as ``expect nothing''; that is, transmit
string regardless of what is received. Empty double-quotes
string cause a lone `\er' (carriage return) to be sent.
One of the following keywords may be substituted for the
BREAK Generate a 3/10 second BREAK
BREAK\fIn\fP Generate an \fIn\fP/10 second BREAK
CR Send a Carriage Return (same as "").
EOT Send an End-Of-Transmission character, ASCII \e004.
Note that this will cause most hosts to hang up.
PAUSE Pause for 3 seconds.
PAUSE\fIn\fP Pause for \fIn\fR seconds.
P_ODD Use odd parity on future send strings.
P_ONE Use parity one on future send strings.
P_EVEN Use even parity on future send strings. (Default)
P_ZERO Use parity zero on future send strings.
string consists of the keyword
then the string following is used to arm an abort trap. If that string
is subsequently received any time prior to the completion of the entire
will abort, just as if the
script had timed out. This is useful for trapping error messages from
port selectors or front-end processors such as ``Host Unavailable'' or
"" "" ogin:--ogin: nuucp ssword: ufeedme
This is executed as, ``When the remote system answers,
the remote to transmit the string `ogin:'. If it doesn't
within 45 seconds, send another carriage return. When it finally does,
it the string `nuucp'. Then
the string `ssword:'; when that is received,
/usr/lib/uucp/UUAIDS/L.sys L.sys example
uucp(1C), uux(1C), L-devices(5), services(5), uucico(8C)
``ABORT'' in the send/expect script is expressed ``backwards,'' that is,
Several of the backslash escapes in the send/expect strings are confusing
and/or different from those used by AT&T and Honey-Danber UUCP.
For example, `\eb' requests
a BREAK, while practically everywhere else `\eb' means backspace.
`\et' for tab and `\ef' for formfeed are not implemented.
`\es' is a kludge; it would be more sensible to be able to delimit strings