L.SYS(5)                                                              L.SYS(5)


NAME
       L.sys - UUCP remote host description file

DESCRIPTION
       The  L.sys file is consulted by the UUCP daemon uucico(8C) for informa‐
       tion on remote systems.  L.sys includes the  system  name,  appropriate
       times  to  call, phone numbers, and a login and password for the remote
       system.  L.sys is thus a privileged file, owned by the UUCP Administra‐
       tor; it is accessible only to the Administrator and to the superuser.

       Each line in L.sys 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  begin‐
       ning  with a ‘#’ character are comments; long lines can be continued by
       appending a ‘\’ character to the end of the line.

       The first five fields (System through Device/Phone_Number) specify  the
       hardware  mechanism  that is necessary to make a connection to a remote
       host, such as a modem or network.  Uucico searches from  the  top  down
       through  L.sys  to  find  the  desired  System;  it  then  opens the L-
       devices(5) file and searches for the first available  device  with  the
       same  Caller,  Class, and (possibly) Device.  (‘‘Available’’ means that
       the device is ready and not being used  for  something  else.)   Uucico
       attempts  a  connection  using that device; if the connection cannot be
       made (for example, a dialer gets a busy signal), uucico tries the  next
       available  device.  If this also fails, it returns to L.sys to look for
       another line for the same System.  If none is found, uucico gives up.

       System is the hostname of the remote system.  Every machine with  which
       this  system  communicates via UUCP should be listed, regardless of who
       calls whom.  Systems not listed in L.sys will not be permitted  a  con‐
       nection.   The  local hostname should not appear here for security rea‐
       sons.

       Times is a comma-separated list of the times of the day and  week  that
       calls  are  permitted  to  this System.  Times is most commonly used to
       restrict long distance telephone calls to those times  when  rates  are
       lower.  List items are constructed as:

            keywordhhmm-hhmm/grade;retry_time

       Keyword is required, and must be one of:

       Any     Any time, any day of the week.

       Wk      Any weekday. In addition, Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, and Su can be
               used for Monday through Sunday, respectively.

       Evening When evening telephone rates are in effect, from 1700  to  0800
               Monday  through  Friday,  and  all  day  Saturday  and  Sunday.
               Evening is the same as Wk1700-0800,Sa,Su.

       Night   When nighttime telephone rates are in effect, from 2300 to 0800
               Monday  through Friday, all day Saturday, and from 2300 to 1700
               Sunday.  Night is the same as Any2300-0800,Sa,Su0800-1700.

       NonPeak This is a slight modification of Evening.  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.
               NonPeak is the same as Any1800-0700,Sa,Su.

       Never   Never  call;  calling into this System is forbidden or impossi‐
               ble.  This is intended for polled connections, where the remote
               system calls into the local machine periodically.  This is nec‐
               essary when one of the machines is lacking  either  dial-in  or
               dial-out modems.

       The optional hhmm-hhmm subfield provides a time range that modifies the
       keyword.  hhmm refers to hours and minutes 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  Evening,
       NonPeak, and Night keywords with a time range.

       The  grade  subfield  is  optional; if present, it is composed of a ‘/’
       (slash) and single character denoting the grade of the connection, from
       0  to 9, A to Z, or a to z.  This specifies that only requests of grade
       grade or better will be transferred during this time.  (The grade of  a
       request or job is specified when it is queued by uucp or uux.)  By con‐
       vention, mail is sent at grade C, news is sent at  grade  d,  and  uucp
       copies  are  sent  at grade n.  Unfortunately, some sites do not follow
       these conventions, so it is not 100% reliable.

       The retry_time subfield is optional; it  must  be  preceded  by  a  ‘;’
       (semicolon) and specifies the time, in minutes, before a failed connec‐
       tion may be tried again.  (This restriction is in addition to any  con‐
       straints imposed by the rest of the Time field.)  By default, the retry
       time starts at 10 minutes and  gradually  increases  at  each  failure,
       until  after  26 tries uucico gives up completely (MAX RETRIES). If the
       retry time is too small, uucico may run into MAX RETRIES too soon.

       Caller is the type of device used:

       ACU     Automatic call unit or auto-dialing modem  such  as  the  Hayes
               Smartmodem  1200 or Novation ‘‘Smart Cat’’. See L-devices for a
               list of supported modems.

       DIR     Direct connect; hardwired line (usually  RS-232)  to  a  remote
               system.

       MICOM   Micom Terminal Switch.

       PAD     X.25 PAD connection.

       PCP     GTE   Telenet  PC  Pursuit.  See  L-devices  for  configuration
               details.

       SYTEK   Sytek high-speed dedicated modem port connection.

       TCP     Berkeley TCP/IP or 3Com UNET  connection.  These  are  mutually
               exclusive.   TCP  ports  do not need entries in L-devices since
               all the necessary information is contained in L.sys.   If  sev‐
               eral  alternate  ports  or network connections should be tried,
               use multiple L.sys entries.

       Class 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 L-devices file.

       On some devices, the baud may be  preceded  by  a  non-numeric  prefix.
       This  is used in L-devices to distinguish among devices that have iden‐
       tical Caller 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.

       On TCP connections, Class is the port number (an integer number)  or  a
       port  name  from /etc/services that is used to make the connection. For
       standard Berkeley TCP/IP, UUCP normally uses port number 540.

       Device/Phone_Number varies based on the Caller field.  For ACU devices,
       this  is  the  phone  number to dial.  The number may include: digits 0
       through 9; # and * 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 tele‐
       phone punctuation characters (such as the slash  and  parentheses)  are
       ignored, although uucico does not guarantee this.

       The phone number can be preceded by an alphabetic string; the string is
       indexed and converted through the L-dialcodes(5) file.

       For DIR devices, the Device/Phone_Number field contains the name of the
       device  in  /dev  that  is used to make the connection. There must be a
       corresponding line in  L-devices  with  identical  Caller,  Class,  and
       Device fields.

       For  TCP  and other network devices, Device/Phone_Number holds the true
       network name of the remote system, which may be different from its UUCP
       name (although one would hope not).

       Expect and Send refer to an arbitrarily long set of strings that alter‐
       nately specify what to expect and what to send to login to  the  remote
       system once a physical connection has been established.  A complete set
       of expect/send strings is referred to as an  expect/send  script.   The
       same  syntax  is used in the L-devices file to interact with the dialer
       prior to making a connection; there it is referred to as a chat script.
       The complete format for one expect/send pair is:

            expect-timeout-send-expect-timeout   send

       Expect  and  Send  are  character  strings.  Expect is compared against
       incoming text from the remote host; send is sent back  when  expect  is
       matched.  By default, the send is followed by a ‘\r’ (carriage return).
       If the expect string is not matched  within  timeout  seconds  (default
       45),  then  it  is  assumed  that  the match failed.  The ‘expect-send-
       expect’ notation provides a limited loop mechanism; if the first expect
       string  fails  to  match,  then  the send string between the hyphens is
       transmitted, and uucico waits for the second expect string. This can be
       repeated  indefinitely. When the last expect string fails, uucico hangs
       up and logs that the connection failed.

       The timeout can (optionally) be specified by  appending  the  parameter
       ‘~nn’ to the expect string, when nn is the timeout time in seconds.

       Backslash  escapes  that  may be imbedded in the expect or send strings
       include:

            \bGenerate a 3/10 second BREAK.
            \bnWhere n is a single-digit number;
            generate an n/10 second BREAK.
            \cSuppress the \r at the end of a send string.
            \dDelay; pause for 1 second. (Send only.)
            \rCarriage Return.
            \sSpace.
            \nNewline.
            \xxxWhere xxx is an octal constant;
            denotes the corresponding ASCII character.

       As a special case, an empty pair of  double-quotes  ""  in  the  expect
       string is interpreted as ‘‘expect nothing’’; that is, transmit the send
       string regardless of what is received. Empty double-quotes in the  send
       string cause a lone ‘\r’ (carriage return) to be sent.

       One of the following keywords may be substituted for the send string:

            BREAKGenerate a 3/10 second BREAK
            BREAKnGenerate an n/10 second BREAK
            CRSend a Carriage Return (same as "").
            EOTSend an End-Of-Transmission character, ASCII \004.
            Note that this will cause most hosts to hang up.
            NLSend a Newline.
            PAUSEPause for 3 seconds.
            PAUSEnPause for n seconds.
            P_ODDUse odd parity on future send strings.
            P_ONEUse parity one on future send strings.
            P_EVENUse even parity on future send strings. (Default)
            P_ZEROUse parity zero on future send strings.

       Finally,  if  the expect string consists of the keyword ABORT, then the
       string following is used to arm an abort trap. If that string is subse‐
       quently  received  any  time  prior  to  the  completion  of the entire
       expect/send script, then uucico will abort, just as if the  script  had
       timed  out. This is useful for trapping error messages from port selec‐
       tors or front-end processors such as ‘‘Host Unavailable’’  or  ‘‘System
       is Down.’’

       For example:

            ""  ""  ogin:--ogin:  nuucp  ssword:  ufeedme

       This  is executed as, ‘‘When the remote system answers, expect nothing.
       Send a carriage return.  Expect  the  remote  to  transmit  the  string
       ‘ogin:’. If it doesn’t within 45 seconds, send another carriage return.
       When it finally does, send it the  string  ‘nuucp’.   Then  expect  the
       string ‘ssword:’; when that is received, send ‘ufeedme’.’’

FILES
       /usr/lib/uucp/L.sys
       /usr/lib/uucp/UUAIDS/L.sysL.sys example

SEE ALSO
       uucp(1C), uux(1C), L-devices(5), services(5), uucico(8C)

BUGS
       ‘‘ABORT’’  in  the  send/expect script is expressed ‘‘backwards,’’ that
       is, it should be written ‘‘ expect ABORT’’ but instead it is  ‘‘  ABORT
       expect’’.

       Several of the backslash escapes in the send/expect strings are confus‐
       ing and/or different from those used by  AT&T  and  Honey-Danber  UUCP.
       For  example,  ‘\b’ requests a BREAK, while practically everywhere else
       ‘\b’ means backspace.  ‘\t’ for tab  and  ‘\f’  for  formfeed  are  not
       implemented.  ‘\s’ is a kludge; it would be more sensible to be able to
       delimit strings with quotation marks.


4.3 Berkeley Distribution       April 24, 1986                        L.SYS(5)
 
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