System Administration Guide: Network Services

UUCP READ and WRITE Options

These options specify the various parts of the file system that uucico can read from or write to. You can designate READ and WRITE options with either MACHINE or LOGNAME entries.

The default for both the READ and WRITE options is the uucppublic directory, as shown in the following strings:


READ=/var/spool/uucppublic WRITE=/var/spool/uucppublic 

The strings READ=/ and WRITE=/ specify permission to access any file that can be accessed by a local user with Other permissions.

The value of these entries is a colon-separated list of path names. The READ option is for requesting files, and the WRITE option is for depositing files. One of the values must be the prefix of any full path name of a file entering or exiting. To grant permission to deposit files in /usr/news as well as in the public directory, use the following values with the WRITE option:


WRITE=/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/news 

If the READ and WRITE options are used, all path names must be specified because the path names are not added to the default list. For instance, if the /usr/news path name were the only path specified in a WRITE option, permission to deposit files in the public directory would be denied.

Be careful which directories you make accessible for reading and writing by remote systems. For example, the /etc directory contains many critical system files. Remote users should not have permission to deposit files in this directory.