From: jeh@cmkrnl.com
Newsgroups: vmsnet.uucp,news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Confused by distributions...
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:24:28 PDT
Organization: Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego, CA

In article <1992Oct7.092110.43656@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>,
 sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) writes:
> The problem is that about 5-10% of the articles posted have
> distributions that match newsgroups rather than actual distributions,
> for example, Distribution: comp.  The second form will accept those
> articles. I personally use the second form.

This bug was fixed in an earlier release of news -- in fact Geoff and I went
back and forth on several versions of the fix.  After the fix, Distribution:
headers are checked against the newsgroup filter as well as the distribution
filter, and if they pass either, they're accepted.  So articles with (for
example) Distribution: comp will be accepted as long as comp is accepted by the
newsgroup filter.  This allows you to use the simpler form of distribution 
filter. 

> Dick Munroe writes:
>> I was under the impression from the News documentation (clearly
>> incorrectly) that in absence of a distribution field in the news.sys
>> file OR an entry in the news.sysd file, News assumed that distributions
>> don't matter.
> 
> I would like to know where you found such a statement in the ANU News
> documentation, since it it TOTALLY wrong.  Distributions ALWAYS matter
> to NEWS.

Dick may be thinking of the comments in the (poorly named!) NEWS.DISTRIBUTION
file, which indicate that if a given neighbor is not mentioned in the file,
articles from that neighbor will be fed to all other sites (to the extent
dictated by news.sys anyway).  Note that the NEWS.DISTRIBUTION file has nothing
to do with Distribution: headers; it should have been named NEWS.PATH-FILTER
or some such.  With NEWS 6.1, NEWS.DISTRIBUTION is obsolete; its functions are
available through syntax in the NEWS.SYS entries.  

>> And if not, how do I guarantee that an item will ALWAYS get delivered
>> independent of distribution setting (like to my newsfeed site).  I'm
>> using version 6.1a4 (or whatever version was released with DECUS UUCP
>> 2.0.
> 
> You probably don't want to do that, since it totally defeats the
> purpose of distributions. For example, if I post something to the ks
> distribution, it should only be sent to sites that are in Kansas.
> Decide what distributions you want to see, list them in your NEWS.SYS
> file and have your feed site only send you the distributions you want.
> If you absolutly insist on ignoring usenet conventions and
> contributing to the distribution leaking problems you can do:
> 
> thehulk/dmc.com:\
> alt,bionet,biz,can,comp,control,dmc,general,gnu,jobs,junk,k12,local,mail,\
> misc,mtl,ne,news,rec,sci,soc,talk,to,vmsnet:::all
> 
> but it is a REALLY bad idea.

Bob, for "typical" sites it's a bad idea, but things aren't always that clean.
Dick runs a news feed service and has some customers who are outside of his
geographic area (not unlike uunet or psi, but on a smaller scale).  Suppose
that he has a customer in Kansas?  And suppose that dmc (thehulk) is that
customer's only newsfeed?  That customer will expect to see your posts to the
'ks' distribution.  If Dick doesn't accept 'ks' from his feed sites, this won't
happen.  

Unfortunately, it also won't happen if none of Dick's other neighbors accept
the 'ks' distribution.  In general, posts to 'ks' won't be seen by all sites in
the 'ks' distribution unless at least one of the following is true:  (a) News
paths between any two sites in 'ks' don't travel through any sites outside of
'ks'.  (b) where paths between sites in 'ks' travel through sites that aren't
in Kansas, all such sites agree to accept and forward the 'ks' distribution. 

The practical upshot of this, of course, is that the "distribution" mechanism
is broken. 

	--- Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego CA
uucp 'g' protocol guru and release coordinator, VMSnet (DECUS uucp) W.G., and 
Chair, VMS Programming and Internals Working Group, U.S. DECUS VAX Systems SIG 
Internet:  jeh@cmkrnl.com, hanrahan@eisner.decus.org, or jeh@crash.cts.com
Uucp:  ...{crash,eisner,uunet}!cmkrnl!jeh
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