Site Naming

As with TCP/IP-based networking, your host has to have a name for UUCP networking. As long as you simply want to use UUCP for file transfers to or from sites you dial up directly, or on a local network, this name does not have to meet any standards.

However, if you use UUCP for a mail or news link, you should think about having the name registered with the UUCP Mapping project. The UUCP Mapping Project is described in chapter-. Even if you participate in a domain, you might consider having an official UUCP name for your site.

Frequently, people choose their UUCP name to match the first component of their fully qualified domain name. Suppose your site's domain address is swim.twobirds.com, then your UUCP host name would be swim. Think of UUCP sites as knowing each other on a first-name basis. Of course, you can also use a UUCP name completely unrelated to your fully qualified domain name.

However, make sure not to use the unqualified site name in mail addresses unless you have registered it as your official UUCP name. At the very best, mail to an unregistered UUCP host will vanish in some big black bit bucket. If you use a name already held by some other site, this mail will be routed to that site, and cause its postmaster no end of headaches.

By default, the UUCP suite uses the name set by hostname as the site's UUCP name. This name is commonly set in the /etc/rc.local script. If your UUCP name is different from what you set your host name to, you have to use the hostname option in the config file to tell uucico about your UUCP name. This is described below.