uuxqt problem (was Re: TZ/rmail problems again)

[Jeff Mann]

In article <1991Apr24.054900.27794 at panix.uucp> alexis at panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>Jeff Mann writes about continued problems with TZ and uuxqt, showing a trace
>of a sessionin my wrapper where one uuxqt fails and the next succeeds.
>
>This is really weird. Time to start looking for the _really_ stupid stuff,
>because not much else seems left. Try putting "echo $TZ 1>&2" right before
>the line in the wrapper that calls uuxqt- it is possible that TZ is getting
>reset within the script? (Yes, I know that's stupid... but like I said...)

Not so stupid, really.  I did put an "echo TZ" into the log, and guess
what?  The uuxqt wrapper itself was being called with TZ unset.  (The
example log I gave might have given the impression that the one uuxqt
that worked and another that failed were from the same invocation of the
uuxqt wrapper - they weren't).  I don't know why or how it was called
with TZ unset at this point, because it is always exec'ed from uucico,
and all my scripts (uushell, demons, etc.) have TZ set.  One thing I
just noticed is that your wrapper script doesn't set TZ!  I guess I had
just assumed that it did, and one of your postings also implied this.

So why is TZ not set? Looking back through my files, I found:

>Since uucp doesn't see much difference between calling and being called, the
>most likely thing is that uushell is screwy. Not surprising. The original looks
>like this:
>env "TZ=`/bin/cat /etc/TIMEZONE`" /usr/lib/uucp/uucico
>This is because the uucico is very very stupid and won't work without TZ being
>set properly. This caused us incredible amounts of grief when we were getting
>started. Try changing it to read
>env "TZ=EST5EDT" /usr/lib/uucp/uucico
>instead. (Since you're in New Jersey. Otherwise, use the right zone...)

I'm afraid I don't quite understand the reasoning for this - why doesn't
TZ=`/bin/cat /etc/TIMEZONE` work if you have /etc/TIMEZONE configured?
Is this the cause of my problem?  At any rate, I've put TZ=EST5EDT in
the uuxqt wrapper and it's fixed.

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