HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: 12 Jan 93 03:12:39 GMT
Organization: The University of British Columbia
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.ubc.ca

dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au (David Clunie) writes:

]In article 1iq5scINN4p8@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca, unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:

]>Our installation of nntp and inews has inews acting as a fascist
]>dictator who hates short replies. every time I forward a response to the
]>...

]You are probably using inn that has an option to do this at compile time.

]Personally I think it is an extremely good idea - if a reply is so short then

I do not. Why? a) it is easily subverted - just have your editor replace
> with ] say for all first characters ( :g/^>/s/^>/\]/ ) in vi say (
which you could put into the EXINIT environment variable say) and there
you are. 
b) It does not stop the problem it was supposed to cure- namely long
includes with short additions, at least I see them all the time.
c) It is rude. It  attempts to enforce etiquette by force. Etiquette
should be taught not enforced with extreme rudeness,
as inews does by throwing away the message. It would be far more
helpful if it posted the bad message but sent a message to the incorrect
poster telling him that it is bad etiquette not to edit down the
included material.
From: unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: 12 Jan 1993 21:06:45 GMT
Organization: The University of British Columbia
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.ubc.ca

tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli) writes:


]I agree!  We can't have netnews software forcing people to learn more
]about how to use their computers.  If people learn to a 1-2 keystroke
+80 more lines deleted

Now if only inews could reject overblown humour I might support that!
Maybe more than one :) in an article, but then this one didn't have any.
So how can we impliment a quick and dirty soution to this problem?


Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Slurp, a new passive NNTP client
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 00:05:58 GMT

How does slurping handle failure?  If a connection shuts down partway
through a transfer does it keep the old message-ids around?

Might it be better (and less concerned about time errors) to keep a
.newsrc on your client system that keeps track of article numbers on
the server system?  This does make it difficult to change servers, of
course, but in that case you can switch temporarily to time.

By using a .newsrc file, you can also use an arbitron type method to
only grab the groups people are currently reading.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: nesman@null.camb.inmet.com (Stephen Nesman)
Subject: Re: "improper reponse to IHAVE"
Organization: Intermetrics, Inc.
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:41:27 GMT

In article <tkevans.726425065@eplrx7.es.dupont.com> tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com writes:
>I have what's intended to be a bi-directinal NNTP feed, but can only
>get one end working.  When I use nntpsend to send outgoing news to
>the remote, all works fine, but when the remote tries to use nntpsend,
>the following error occurs:
>
>nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com improper response to IHAVE: 400 while
>offering junk/22278
>nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com stats 1 offered 0 accepted 0 rejected 0
>failed
>
>Note that the article is offered, but not rejected and it says that
>it also did not fail.
>

nntpxmit (version 1.5.11t) has a debug option which shows the NNTP
conversation including strings associated with the 400 messages.  I
have added a "-d" option to my nntpsend to turn on the "-d" option on
nntpxmit.  I have found this very helpful in debugging new nntp
connections.

Stephen Nesman
Intermetrics, Inc.
nesman@inmet.com
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: NNTP and XTHREADS: problem
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:50:33 GMT

I've got NNTP and XTHREADS working fine here, but at another site some
groups aren't being read threaded under trn. The XTHREADS command works
so far as I can tell, but once it's over trn thinks there are zero
threaded messages. Running trn on the server works. Both the server
and the client are 386/AT machines running SCO Unix. I can't see anything
wrong with the configurations.

What sorts of things should I be looking for?
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
+1 713 274 5180                            "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"
From: rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: throttled innd
Date: 11 Jan 1993 10:46:43 -0500
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA
Distribution: news
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

In <VISTI.93Jan11134251@laphroaig.cs.hut.fi> visti@cs.hut.fi (Hannu Visti) writes:
>	Is it possible to make innd/nnrpd allow local posting when innd
>is throttled because spool partition is almost full?
Not really.  In INN1.3 if the server is full inews will spool the
article (and you can later run rnews to actually post it).  Right now,
innd does not really distinguish between local and remote postings.

I might change that so you could do
	ctlinnd reject 'Go away, we are molting'
to reject remote connections.  And 'ctlinnd pause' will be changed to not
reject remotes.  I want to release 1.3, so this might have to wait.
	/r$
Xref: sparky news.software.nntp:1764 news.software.readers:2740
From: jeff@wisdom.bubble.org (Jeff Ross)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.readers
Subject: Re: Controlling access to newsgroups
Date: 10 Jan 93 22:36:50 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: Wisdom's Pony Express


with unix it is quite easy as Henry Spencer said as long as the news program
can read and write the directories there is no problem. 

all you have to do (and what I did at one point) was to create a group
in "/etc/groups" make sure that i put news in that group along with
any user or users I want to be able to access that group then do: 
chown news.group {directory}
chmod 750 {directory}

I have had no problems since, and newsreaders seem to ignore the directory
if they can't open it.  (or at least with vnews and trn)

all solved!

			Jeff

-- 

.Sig??? you want a stinkin' .Sig???
Jeff Ross
201-299-1819 (home)				jeff@wisdom.bubble.org
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Wanted: Stories of TCPware, PSInet, and ANU-NEWS
From: rharwood@east.pima.edu
Date: 7 Jan 93 21:21:25 MST

I am about to connect my company MicroVAX II to the Internet, probably through
PSI-net using Process's TCPWare, using the latest ANU-NEWS.   If you have any
experiences, especially regarding configuration and setup -- good or bad --
either with PSI, ANU-NEWS, or TCPware, (anyone with a combination of all three
gets a prize!) I'd appreciate a quick EMail.  If enough interest exists, I'll
summarize later...

Thanks,
Ray
-----
Ray Harwood           |Data Basix           |Adjunct Faculty, East Campus,
Voice: (602)721-1988  |PO Box 18324         |   Pima Community College
FAX:   (602)721-7240  |Tucson, AZ 85731     |Instructor in Ada and Pascal
CompuServe: 76645,1370|AppleLink: DATA.BASIX|Internet: rharwood@east.pima.edu
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 20:35:12 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1iup5mINNaij@rodan.UU.NET> rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz) writes:
>The primary intent was to catch people who do a followup-including-original,
>and then exit the editor and post without making any changes.  As such,
>it works very well for this...

It's major overkill for this, since it also catches a lot of legitimate
postings.  If you want to catch followups with no new content, you should
look for that case and no other, i.e. look for postings with no nonblank
nonquoted lines between the first quoted line and the signature.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Tim Evans)
Subject: "improper reponse to IHAVE"
Reply-To: tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com
Organization: DuPont Engineering Physics Laboratory
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.4.19
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:44:25 GMT

I have what's intended to be a bi-directinal NNTP feed, but can only
get one end working.  When I use nntpsend to send outgoing news to
the remote, all works fine, but when the remote tries to use nntpsend,
the following error occurs:

nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com improper response to IHAVE: 400 while
offering junk/22278
nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com stats 1 offered 0 accepted 0 rejected 0
failed

Note that the article is offered, but not rejected and it says that
it also did not fail.

Source code says:

#define ERR_GOODBYE     400     /* Have to hang up for some reason */

The remote is running 1.5.11, while I'm running 1.5.10.  Is this the
problem?
-- 
Tim Evans                     |    E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.
tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com  |    Experimental Station
(302) 695-9353/7395           |    P.O. Box 80357
EVANSTK AT A1 AT ESVAX        |    Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0357
From: barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Alan P Barrett)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: Accessing the history file via NNTP
Date: 5 Jan 1993 09:22:14 +0200
Organization: Dept. Elec. Eng., Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: daisy.ee.und.ac.za

In article <C0CJC8.Bn8@borland.com>,
davison@borland.com (Wayne Davison) writes:
> This is a good first step.  However, I can also see needing to go from
> message-id to newsgroup list, so perhaps there is a need for a new
> command, such as XHIST, to return the portion of the history line that
> lists the groups and article numbers? 

How about extending the XHDR command to take a message-id instead of an
article number.

--apb (Alan Barrett)
From: cudep@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: When nntpd runs newsrun, the tcp connection dies
Date: 8 Jan 93 10:56:26 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: Team Limpid's Meathead With Aptitude - Kunst und Wahnsinn
NNTP-Posting-Host: spatula.csv.warwick.ac.uk

In article <C0II56.Byx@rex.uokhsc.edu> ben@rex.uokhsc.edu (Benjamin Z. Goldsteen) writes:
>      I am setting up a news system on a DGUX 5220 AViiON running 4.31
>(5.42 on the way...).  It works OK except for one thing -- whenever
>nntpd1.5.11 starts up a real newsrun (vs one that detects that
>one is already running and then quits), it drops the tcp connection.
>So, if I get say 400 articles, it will spawn a newsrun process after
>say 300, and then complain that it didn't get an ending period (because
>the connection stops).  I could just have nntpd not run newsrun or
>do something similar, but now I am annoyed (besides, when I get
>multiple incoming connections, I might have too many duplicates....).

Run msgidd, and don't spawn newsrun from nntpd.
Running it from cron is ok, but newsxd it better since it won't spawn
a new newsrun until the old one has finished (or died).

With your original scenario, I noticed a few problems when there was a lot
of news flying around, in that the spawned newsrun just picks up more and
more batches from other connections.  This meant that the connection that
spawned the newsrun wasn't transferring any articles during this period,
and it often timed out with the syptoms you mention because the remote end
shut down.

Cheers,
-- 
\/ato - Ian Dickinson - NIC handle: ID17                   No-one is to molest
vato@csv.warwick.ac.uk  ...!mcsun!uknet!warwick!vato           the wombat when
/I=I/S=Dickinson/OU=CSV/O=Warwick/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/            anyone is
@c=GB@o=University of Warwick@ou=Computing Services@cn=Ian Dickinson  watching.
From: dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au (David Clunie)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: 12 Jan 1993 01:43:33 GMT
Organization: Her Master's Voice
Distribution: world
Reply-To: dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: britt.pax.tpa.com.au

In article 1iq5scINN4p8@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca, unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:

>Our installation of nntp and inews has inews acting as a fascist
>dictator who hates short replies. every time I forward a response to the
>group, it bounces the forward if the number of new lines is less than
>the number of included lines. This is totally stupid behaviour.

You are probably using inn that has an option to do this at compile time.

Personally I think it is an extremely good idea - if a reply is so short then
surely it is not necessary to include a whole lot of the previous message. It is
easy enough to edit down the included text to the bare minimum for recognizability
and this restriction forces considered replies rather than quick one liners to long
posts.

I agree that it can be irritating occasionally, but no where near as irritaing as
reading a huge multipage repost of included text with "I agree" tacked on at the
end. 

I have installed inn this way at my site, I congratulate Rich if this was his idea
as I presume it was and I encourage others to do the same.

david




Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com (Richard Todd)
Subject: Re: When nntpd runs newsrun, the tcp connection dies
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 00:18:56 GMT

ben@rex.uokhsc.edu (Benjamin Z. Goldsteen) writes:
>So, if I get say 400 articles, it will spawn a newsrun process after
>say 300, and then complain that it didn't get an ending period (because
>the connection stops).  

Yeah.  As Ian Dickenson noted, the problem is that if there are a bunch
of batches waiting to be processed, newsrun will take long enough to 
complete (with nntpd waiting all the while) that the inbound connection
will time out.  You can just disable nntpd's running of newsrun entirely
and run it from cron, as he suggested.  Alternately, you can move the 
newsrun script to another name (say, newsrun.real) and replace newsrun with
a script that does just 
	#!/bin/sh
	/usr/lib/newsbin/input/newsrun.real &
	exit 0
That way, each time nntpd wants to run newsrun, it will start up one, but
do so in background, so nntpd doesn't have to wait for the batches to be
processed.  

>                        I could just have nntpd not run newsrun or
>do something similar, but now I am annoyed (besides, when I get
>multiple incoming connections, I might have too many duplicates....).

Compile and run msgidd and add the patches to nntpd for msgidd support.
That'll solve the duplicate problem.  

>P.S.What do other people get in terms of speed --
>I am receiving about .9 articles per second from a machine 20 ms away
>by ping (though I used to remember it being 3 or 4)...I can process
>about 3 to 6 articles per second.

Odd.  You should, I would think, be able to read in articles faster than
you can process them.  Reading in articles is basically nothing but a 
straight copy from the net connection to in.coming/nntp.* , plus an occasional
history lookup (1/article), whereas actually processing the articles requires
adding to history, parsing headers, copying the article, etc. --- considerably
more work.  On the machine I've had a chance to get timings for (a Mac Quadra 
700 running A/UX 3.0, C News Perf. Release, NNTP 1.5.11), nntpd can manage
to suck in a little over 4 articles per second max, whereas max thruput
I've ever seen thru the relaynews part is 2.5 articles/sec. or so.  
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us
  rmtodd@servalan.uucp  New Improved Domain: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com
"...the phrase 'Open Systems' makes me think of sucking chest wounds."-P.daSilva
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: doug@cc.ysu.edu (Doug Sewell)
Subject: Re: "improper reponse to IHAVE"
Organization: Bush in 92 ? NOT!
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:28:45 GMT

Tim Evans (tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com) wrote:
: I have what's intended to be a bi-directinal NNTP feed, but can only
: get one end working.  When I use nntpsend to send outgoing news to
: the remote, all works fine, but when the remote tries to use nntpsend,
: the following error occurs:

: nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com improper response to IHAVE: 400 while
: offering junk/22278
: nntpxmit: eplrx7.es.dupont.com stats 1 offered 0 accepted 0 rejected 0
: failed

: Note that the article is offered, but not rejected and it says that
: it also did not fail.

: Source code says:

: #define ERR_GOODBYE     400     /* Have to hang up for some reason */

: The remote is running 1.5.11, while I'm running 1.5.10.  Is this the
: problem?

A couple of cases that can cause this:

- High load average.
- Disk full (no space or no inodes).
- Site has read authority but not xfer authority.  This can happen if you
  have something like 'default read no' and they don't match any other case.

My suspicion is the last.  Chances are the nntp_access file isn't set up
to match the host-name, the DNS is misconfigured, /etc/hosts is in use and
wrong, or the host is listed wrong in the access file.

To find out which it is, have them telnet from the newshost to your NNTP
port, and try something like this:

You: telnet xxxx.yyy.zzz 119
Them: 201 xxx NNTP blah blah blah     (you MIGHT get a 200 instead of 201).
Y:IHAVE <X@Y>
T:400 <some reason why IHAVE can't be processed>
Y:QUIT

Then you'll have your reason.

--
Doug Sewell, Tech Support, Computer Center, Youngstown State University
doug@cc.ysu.edu	   doug@ysub.bitnet	<internet>!cc.ysu.edu!doug

cat core | uuencode bunny.dropping | mail jp@tygra.michigan.com
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 04:35:43 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1itcv7INNcn8@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:
>a) it is easily subverted...
>b) It does not stop the problem it was supposed to cure...
>c) It is rude. It  attempts to enforce etiquette by force...

A more subtle approach, that would get much the same results without
the hassles, would be to have inews look for a quoted *signature* (to
be precise, for a quoted signature delimiter).  This is a dead giveaway
that the poster hasn't bothered to edit down the quoted text at all.
Catching that sort of thing is about all you can hope for.  Trying to
enforce a minimum original:quoted ratio simply doesn't work; it just
leads to creative quoting styles that make automatic analysis of
article bodies more difficult.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: larry@news.rn.com (Larry Snyder)
Subject: Re: Immediate posting with C News & nntp
Organization: Gator Communications - Feeds-R-Us 219-289-3745 
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:11:04 GMT

snewton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Steven E. Newton) writes:

>I'm running nntp 1.5.11 and C News performance release of May 20, 1992.
>My question is: how do I get articles posted through nntp to show up right
>away, instead of at the next invocation of newsrun?  It appears that I need

Gosh - I can answer this -- look at the variables TOOMANY, TOOBIG and TOOOLD
in common/conf.h -- as soon as inbound traffic is larger than any of these,
bingo -- newsbin is spawned.

Ours are set low, 2*60 seconds, 4 articles and 25K, whichever comes first
causes newsbin to be spawned.

You could also run INN which is designed to handle this better thus reducing
the amount of duplicate articles -- but from what I understand, it doesn't
handle UUCP connection that well (if you need to support UUCP)

-- 
Larry Snyder                                    internet: larry@gator.rn.com
keeper of the Gator                                  uucp: uunet!gator!larry
From: rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: fascist inews refuses short replies- Solutio
Date: 12 Jan 1993 10:47:02 -0500
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

In <1it7o5INN5qc@flash.pax.tpa.com.au> dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au writes:
>I congratulate Rich if this was his idea
It was not.  I believe the idea came from Rick Adams; at any rate, it
first showed up in an early release of 2.11 news.

The primary intent was to catch people who do a followup-including-original,
and then exit the editor and post without making any changes.  As such,
it works very well for this.  It has its problems, and annoys the hell out of
some people.  C'est la vie.
	/r$
From: visti@cs.hut.fi (Hannu Visti)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: throttled innd
Date: 11 Jan 1993 11:42:51 GMT
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Distribution: news
NNTP-Posting-Host: laphroaig.cs.hut.fi


	Is it possible to make innd/nnrpd allow local posting when innd
is throttled because spool partition is almost full? Here innd gets throttled
when spool is <4000kb, there would still be space for local postings if
innd accepted them.

/hv
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
From: steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk (Stephen Hebditch)
Subject: Slurp, a new passive NNTP client
Organization: TQM Communications, London, UK
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 14:42:34 GMT

Slurp is an advanced passive NNTP client for UNIX. It will connect to a
remote NNTP server and retrieve articles in a specified set of Usenet
newsgroups that have arrived after a particular date (typically the
last time it was invoked) for processing by your local news system.

The Feature List.

- No restriction on the number of newsgroups that can be retrieved in a
  session. The client does a series of NEWNEWS requests if necessary to
  build up a list of articles which need to be retrieved from the
  server.

- Compatible with C News and INN.

- Greatly enhanced efficiency over nntpxfer. Large batches of articles
  are piped to rnews rather than individual articles, massively
  reducing the fork/exec overhead.

- Easy configuration.

  slurp.sys defines which groups you wish to get from which server in a
  similar way to the normal C News sys file, e.g.

	news.demon.co.uk:demon.*,!demon.msdos.announce,uk.*,\
	!uk.net.maps/world,uk

  slurp.tim contains the time to be used for the NEWNEWS request at
  each server.

  The newsgroups list, start time and distributions can be overridden
  on the command line. There are also command line settings to enable
  debugging output, prevent writing the time for the next NEWNEWS to
  slurp.tim and use the local time for the next NEWNEWS rather than the
  remote time.

- No lost articles due to unsynchronised clocks. By default, the time
  for the next NEWNEWS is set by a call to the tcp time service on the
  remote machine. This fixes a problem in nntpxfer where articles could
  be missed if the clock on the server is behind that on the client.

- Faster article throughput. If configured to do so, slurp stacks up
  the next article request before the current article is received,
  decreasing the total article transfer time by around 30%. This is
  most of use for people retrieving news over a dialup slip/ppp
  connection.

- Logging to syslog of the number of new, missing and duplicate
  articles at the end of a session plus, if required, the transfer
  speed of the article fetching stage.

- Independent of the NNTP 1.5.11 code.


Slurp was written in ANSI C under Dell's SVR4/386 but is reasonably
portable to most other modern versions of UNIX - porting to SunOS 4.x.x
just requires some configuration file changes for example.

Available by ftp from ftp.demon.co.uk:pub/news/slurp/slurp-1.03.tar.Z.

-- 
Stephen Hebditch  TQM Communications  steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk +44 836 825962
Xref: sparky news.software.nntp:1752 news.software.b:3712