HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: how can I have private newsgroups?
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 23:45:01 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Dec18.162951.12616@rick.dgbt.doc.ca> andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) writes:
>Is there a way for me to have private local newsgroups?
>
>That is, I have a list of users and they should be the only ones who
>can read and post to this newsgroup.  Better yet, no one else should
>even know about this newsgroup.

It can't be kept secret and still be readable in the same ways as the
normal groups; the list of groups is in the active file and is public
knowledge.

You *can* set up a completely separate news system, using different
directories, and then give your privileged users instructions on how
to point their news readers at those directories.  (The details vary
from reader to reader.)  That way you can have a private active file.

However, bear in mind that people can read news with "cat" if they must.
The only way to keep groups private is to use the Unix protection system
to ensure that unauthorized people cannot read the files at all.

If all your readers are coming in only via NNTP, and the filesystem(s)
in question are not accessible via NFS or equivalent, then you can play
arbitrarily-complex games in the NNTP daemon.  The capabilities depend
on which NNTP daemon you're using.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: not storing and forwarding with INN
Date: 21 Dec 92 02:53:59 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

I'm considering converting from C-news to INN, and I'm only reading and
looking for trouble so far.  I think I've found one problem.

I have a requirement to receive and feed some newsgroups, but not make them
available for local reading.  With C-news, I do this by making sure that
the groups don't exist locally.  C-news then puts them in junk, which I
make unreadable by ordinary users.  I also fix the nntp_access file so
that people can't read junk via NNTP.  C-news forwards the articles to my
feed sites from junk.

Is there a way to do this with INN?  My understanding is that articles
for newsgroups not present in the active file are simply discarded.
I need something that does not require intervention every time a new
group is created within the unwanted groups.

-- 
-Gary Mills-         -Networking Group-          -U of M Computer Services-
From: bochner@das.harvard.edu (Harry Bochner)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: expire problem in cnews: Ver.24-Mar-1991
Date: 14 Dec 92 21:33:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: das.1992Dec14.213309.1760
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University

In article <1992Dec14.142531.13306@drd.com>, mark@drd.com (Resident.Alien) writes:
|> Expire has recently been dying with the following message mailed to
|> root:
|> ---
|> expire problems:
|> expire: no slash in article path `comp.un'

Sounds like a bad line in the history file, probably one that got truncated
somehow, so that it says ".... comp.un" instead of "... comp.unix.shell/1234",
or some such.

If so, running mkhistory should cure it.

-- 
Harry Bochner
bochner@das.harvard.edu
Xref: sparky news.software.b:3566 comp.unix.aix:12669 comp.unix.questions:14786
From: jerry@austin.ibm.com (Jerry Heyman)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: AIX3.1.5 problem with INN1.2
Date: 17 Dec 92 19:34:12 GMT
Reply-To: jerry@austin.ibm.com
Organization: IBM AIX AWSD Austin, TX
Originator: jerry@dcheney.austin.ibm.com


In article <1gq77qINNmm4@rs6000.bham.ac.uk>, usenet@rs6000.bham.ac.uk (USENET News Service) writes:
> 
> If i run /usr/local/news/bin/expire to expire articles, it runs through
> ok, building a new history.n history file. When it is finished, the new
> history file is copied to the old one, as you'd expect. The problem
> arises when i do a 'df' command on the partition, and i find that
> the space taken up by the two history files has not been reclaimed by
> the system, consequently leaving me with little disk space. By shutting
> down and restarting the server, the space becomes available. 

This isn't necessarily an AIX problem.  As with all Un*x's that I've used,
if process A has a file open and that file is then deleted by process B,
the file for all future process has been removed from the directory, but the 
actual space is not reclaimed for the file system until process A has terminated
and released that inode.

What you need to look for is old running processes that may be utilizing that
old history file and kill them.  The reason the space is being reclaimed when
you shutdown the server is because any of the processes holding open the file
are killed when the server is restarted.

> --
> Glyn Simpson, Systems Officer,  //  Voice: +44 (0) 21 414 6575

jerry
-- 
Jerry Heyman                         e-mail   : jerry@austin.ibm.com
IBM AWSD AIX Dev Env Tools MS 9631    "Software is the difference between
Austin, TX  78758                        hardware and reality"
*** All opinions expressed are exactly that - my opinions and NOT IBM's
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Subject: Re: This UUCP site runs INN
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 07:53:15 GMT
Organization: The Programmer's Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI

In article <1992Dec18.135727.4601@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM> lilb@sony.compuserve.com (Bruce Lilly) writes:
>I'd appreciate it if somebody could be more specific about the
>INN memory requirements:
>a)	exactly how much is ``lots''?

INN wants to keep the entire history file in memory, all the time.
How much "lots" is depends on how much history you are keeping.

>b)	are we talking about physical RAM or virtual memory?

VM, of course.  There's no difference other than speed between RAM and
VM on any reasonably modern Unix system, anyway.  (reasonably modern
== has demand paging)

>c)	does ``fairly important'' mean that INN will crash and
>	burn if it can't malloc  more than 2.5 MB of VM (e.g.)?

I imagine it won't work if it can't malloc enough space to hold the
whole history file, although since I don't run INN I can't be sure.


-- 
Marc Unangst, N8VRH         | "Of course, in order to understand this you
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   |  have to remember that the nucleus of the atom
                            |  is squishy."
                            |    -W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: bruce@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM (Bruce Lilly)
Subject: Re: This UUCP site runs INN (was What is the advantage of INN over CNews?)
Organization: Bruce Lilly
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 13:57:27 GMT
Reply-To: lilb@sony.compuserve.com (Bruce Lilly)

In article <1gll86INNhsv@meaddata.meaddata.com> dem@meaddata.com (David Myers) wrote:
>
>   Also, our news machine has lots of memory.  This is fairly
>important for INN.   

I'd appreciate it if somebody could be more specific about the
INN memory requirements:
a)	exactly how much is ``lots''?
b)	are we talking about physical RAM or virtual memory?
c)	does ``fairly important'' mean that INN will crash and
	burn if it can't malloc  more than 2.5 MB of VM (e.g.)?

>   I've had very few problems with INN.  One problem that cropped up
>at one point (but that has since vanished - odd) is an occasional
>crash of the innd daemon.  This is rather serious, as it prevents
>users from reading news via NNTP.  The easy solution is to write a
>wrapper script that restarts innd should it fail.  I haven't seen a
>failure in almost two months now, though.

Does innd have to be running continuously, or can it be run on an
as-required basis from inetd (suitable for machines with low
volume feeds and only occasional newsreader connections (nntpd
can be run from inetd))?

What other underlying assumptions and requirements exist for
INN? For example, somebody else claimed that because INN can
write to a pipe rather than to a disk file, it's performance can
be better than C news'.  That assumes that a pipe is
fundamentally different from a disk file, which is certainly not
the case for many varieties of the UNIX(R) operating system.
Aside from a socket emulation library, what does INN require
(does it require BSD-hacked signal(3) calls, e.g.)?

-- 
    Bruce Lilly, Product Manager,      | bruce@Broadcast.Sony.COM
    Routers, Peripherals & Still Store,| uunet!sonyusa!sonyd1!bruce
    Sony, 3 Paragon Drive, Montvale,   | lilb@sony.compuserve.com (slow)
    NJ 07645-1735  |  Telephone: +1 201 358 4161  |  FAX: +1 201 358 4274
From: clay@haapi.mn.org (Clayton Haapala)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: CNEWS or BNEWS on Xenix
Summary: Go with Cnews
Keywords: news xenix mail cnews bnews
Date: 14 Dec 92 03:49:01 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Haapi's Hangout

In article <1992Dec13.093227.2220@psg.com> rick@psg.com (Rick Buhagiar) writes:
>
>Can anyone tell me if its possible to run cnews4 on xenix 2.3.2. Someone told
>me to stick to bnews but I read somewhere that cnews is quickier and much more
>powerful.

Go with Cnews.  If using Microsoft C (hopefully the 2.3.1 SoftDev),
don't use -O if using dbz.  Pay heed to the line about "stripinvis"
in the Known Problems list.  Don't bother with the stdio replacement
-- use the stock stuff.  Works great.  Compiles especially easily (as
do most things) if GNU GCC is used.

On my 16mhz 386 with MFM drives, an older Cnews unbatched at 7
articles/sec, and the Performance Release took that up to 11.  Haapi
is now a 50mhz 486 with IDE and SCSI, and unbatches at 21+
-- 
Clay Haapala				"Behold the Holy Pogo Stick"
clay@haapi.mn.org
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: CNEWS or BNEWS on Xenix
Date: 14 Dec 1992 15:38:34 -0500
Organization: Mentor Graphics -- IC Group
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: milk.warren.mentorg.com
Keywords: news xenix mail cnews bnews

In <1992Dec13.093227.2220@psg.com> rick@psg.com (Rick Buhagiar) writes:

>Can anyone tell me if its possible to run cnews4 on xenix 2.3.2. Someone told
>me to stick to bnews but I read somewhere that cnews is quickier and much more
>powerful.

My two cents:

C news is much more modern and much better supported that B news.
Considering that the author of B news doesn't use B news anymore, I
don't think it's a good idea to use it.
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
Reality is stranger than fiction #943247:  The IRS granted
ANS approval as a 501c3 "charity" on September 14, 1992.
From: cs@Germany.EU.net (Chris Schmidt)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Dataloss with innd/nntplink and slow servers
Date: 17 Dec 1992 14:40:07 GMT
Organization: EUnet Backbone, Dortmund, Germany
NNTP-Posting-Host: obsolete.germany.eu.net
Keywords: innd nntplink dataloss

In article <1992Dec17.131639.18996@unipalm.co.uk>, ian@unipalm.co.uk (Ian Phillipps) writes:
|> tale@ten.uu.net (David C Lawrence) writes:
|> 
|> With feeds set up as follows:
|> 
|> doc.ic.ac.uk\
|> 	:*\
|> 	:Tc,Wnm,Fnews.doc.ic.ac.uk\
|> 	:/home/local/news/bin/nntplink news.doc.ic.ac.uk
|> 
|> I.e. the nntplink and inn "share" a spooling/batching file.
|> 
|> I'm seeing the following scenario, which occurs when there is some
|> delay sending articles to a remote site:
|> 
|> 
|> Dec 17 11:13:57 pipe innd: doc.ic.ac.uk:19:proc:18568 cant flush count 5754 Operation would block
|> Dec 17 11:13:57 pipe innd: doc.ic.ac.uk dataloss 5754

I've seen exactly the same problems when trying this setup and I might have
found a working solution for it :

Try setting up the feed as :

doc.ic.ac.uk\
	:*\
	:Tc,Wnm,S1024,Fnews.doc.ic.ac.uk\
	:/home/local/news/bin/nntplink news.doc.ic.ac.uk

I've seen the following messages with this setup :

Dec 17 15:15:25 disaster innd: testsite:20:proc:9384 blocked sleeping 240
Dec 17 15:17:20 disaster innd: testsite spooling 1055 bytes

Which looks like innd is really spooling the articles to the file
specified with 'F'...
 
|> Is it safe to make innd and nntplink share spooling/batching files like this?

Good question - that's exactly what I'd like to know also ...

|> If not, how should I join these two programs?

???

	Chris Schmidt

  ===    ____                          ===       EUnet Deutschland GmbH
  ===   /      /   /   ___    ___  _/_ ===       News-Support
  ===  /----  /   /  /   /  /___/  /   ===       Emil-Figge-Str. 80
  === /____  /___/  /   /  /___   /    ===       D-W-4600 Dortmund 50, Germany
  =====                              =====       Tel. +49 231 755 2444
  ===== Connecting Europe since 1982 =====       Fax  +49 231 755 2386
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: mrl@uai.com (Mark R. Ludwig)
Subject: Automatically flushing C News history.o
Organization: Universal Analytics, Inc., Torrance (LA), CA
Date: 18 Dec 92 12:33:06

I'm trying to keep $NEWSCTL where it is.  We have about 17 megabytes
of available space on that partition if I delete history.o.  The
history file is about 8 megabytes.  If I don't delete history.o,
doexpire (or something it calls) complains that it has to run with
expire -r.

What is the purpose of history.o?  When is it needed?  Can I automate
the removal of history.o?  I'd like not to have to move things.$$
-- 
INET: mrl@uai.com           NIC: ML255           ICBM: USA; Lower Left Coast
"A computer is one of life's joys; it follows simple rules.  Just like
 children, adults need toys, only we like to call them 'tools.'" -- Dave Ross
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: What to do with files in incoming/bad
Date: 17 Dec 92 10:22:42 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <BzBoE0.6pG@avalon.nwc.navy.mil> dejesus@archimedes.nwc.navy.mil (Francisco X DeJesus) writes:
>What is the "standard" thing to do with news batch files that end up
>in the incoming/bad directory? How do I force my news system to process
>these files and extract/store the individual articles?

Standard?  What standard?  One common standard is 'throw them away,
they're only news anyway'.

What I do, which normally rescues (at least most of) the articles:

First try:  Just move the file from in.coming/bad back up into
in.coming.  Usually this works.  Usually the blowup will have been
caused by a bad control message, but the news system seems to have
already, by then, made the history entry saying it's seen that control
message, so on the second time through it gets ignored as a 'duplicate'
and everything goes in fine.

Second try:  On rare occasion, that fails.  In this case, the problem
is usually that some article has, somehow, changed size, so that the
'article length' lines don't match reality, and relaynews (or whoever)
gets out of sync.  From the message sent to you (the usenet guru) you
can identify which message it was.  Then, edit the bad file to remove
the offending article (which you do lose), taking out everything from
(and including) the '#! rnews <number>' line before it, down to (but
NOT including) the '#! rnews <number>' line after it.  Then move it
back up into in.coming.

If none of that works, just drop it on the floor.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Multi-FS news spool layout question
Date: 16 Dec 1992 19:02:57 -0500
Organization: Mentor Graphics -- IC Group
NNTP-Posting-Host: milk.warren.mentorg.com

In article <1gli95INNid5@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> JIM@brownvm.brown.edu (James Mathiesen) writes:

>While we were working on finding this problem, we also noticed
>that the default tag mask used by dbz.c is inappropriate for sites
>with a history file larger than 16 meg.  The patches to
>expire.c and makehistory.c provide an alternate mask of 0x78000000
>that will be used for points up to 134meg in the history file.

Just a thought.  How large does a file have to get before indirect and
double-indirect blocks have to be updated?  I would imagine that
appending history entries one at a time is going to become a bottleneck
without a PrestoServe Board.  I know this would add a lot of state, but
has Rich considered adding code to INN to group history appends, but
not ACK'ing the NNTP feeds until the multi-append is complete?

I guess this might not be an issue and might actually slow down some
sites.  However, a site that is receiving zillions of new articles a
minute might find this a big win.  Of course, if they're getting
zillions of new articles a minute they can afford a PrestoServe board!

Tom
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
Reality is stranger than fiction #943247:  The IRS granted
ANS approval as a 501c3 "charity" on September 14, 1992.
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Handling JUNK
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 21:03:45 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <Bz7Kxs.Eo2@mccc.edu> pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>Does anyone have a well-behaved program for handling news articles that
>end up in the junk newsgroups?

Define "handling", please.  There really isn't anything much that can
be or should be done about them.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: expire: wrong number of fields in history
Date: 18 Dec 92 19:59:38 GMT
Reply-To: rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305)
Organization: Cookson, Peirce & Co., Pittsburgh, PA

In article <2478@itexjct.jct.ac.il> warren@itexjct.jct.ac.il (Warren Burstein) writes:
>I get this message in mail from a c-news system every time expire
>runs.  What do I do now?
>
>expire problems:
>expire: wrong number of fields in history `<1992Nov30.151731.28128@city.cs>	7<AGW.9...'
>expire: wrong number of fields in history `<1992Nov30.154856.11566@rchland.ibm.com>...'
>
I had one from 11/24.  I waited until it was old enough not to affect
any actual news item and then I edited the history file to fix it.  I
think I could have done that earlier at no greater risk.  The problem
is I don't know what risk I was taking!  It seems to have worked but
I don't know for sure yet.

In my case, two lines got appended in the history file.  I just needed
to insert a return at the right point.
-- 
Bob Peirce, Pittsburgh, PA         rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us         412-471-5320
venetia@investor.pgh.pa.us [NeXT Mail]  !uunet.uu.net!pitt!investor!rbp [UUCP]
From: cjc@nwu.edu (Christopher J. Chen)
Subject: unbatcher out of synch?
Followup-To: news.software.b
Organization: Northwestern University
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 21:28:40 GMT

Okay, so I had a disk crash taking /var/spool/news with it.  Luckily,
/usr/local/lib/news didn't disappear, but now I'm getting a whole
bunch of lines in errlog saying that "unbatcher is out of synch".

Pardon me for asking such a newbie question, but what exactly does 
this mean?  I read the FM, but it didn't help.  I even read the
source, but the comment still didn't help me.

What do I need to do to bring things back into synch?


cjc
--
Christopher J. Chen  cjc@nwu.edu  (708) 491-4109  (708) 491-3824 fax
Academic Computing and Network Services, Northwestern University
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only
one
 that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."
                                        -- Wernher von Braun
From: ccsis@sunlab1.bath.ac.uk (Icarus Sparry)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: What to do with files in incoming/bad
Date: 17 Dec 92 12:37:22 GMT
Organization: Bath University Computing Services, UK

In the referenced article, P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
>In article <BzBoE0.6pG@avalon.nwc.navy.mil> dejesus@archimedes.nwc.navy.mil (Francisco X DeJesus) writes:
>>What is the "standard" thing to do with news batch files that end up
>>in the incoming/bad directory? How do I force my news system to process
>>these files and extract/store the individual articles?

>First try:  Just move the file from in.coming/bad back up into
>in.coming.  Usually this works.  Usually the blowup will have been
>caused by a bad control message, but the news system seems to have
>already, by then, made the history entry saying it's seen that control
>message, so on the second time through it gets ignored as a 'duplicate'
>and everything goes in fine.

Cnews will process the entire batch on the first attempt. The fact that
you get no error message the second time is because (as Paul says) it
has already been processed and is therfore discarded. There is no need
to ask Cnews to re-process it, you have already got all the good articles
out of the batch.

>Second try:
(edit the batch to remove the single bad article if possible).
Good advice, but usually this will only get you one extra article, the
one following the bad one, and only then if the bad article is shorter than
its byte count in the #!rnews header implies.

>If none of that works, just drop it on the floor.

Good advice. It is only news after all!
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Posting with the NNTP server
Date: 11 Dec 92 16:01:35 CST
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In <1992Dec10.113545.1239@hccw.com>, david@hccw.com (David Robison) writes:
> I am using the NNTP server on my VAX and the XRN client on my unix 
> machine.  When I post from my unix machine, the message appears in
> the news data base on my VAX but is not sent out to our other news
> sites.
> 
> Can anyone help me guess at what the problem might be?

Not unless you provide some information, like what version of NEWS you
are running, what your NEWS.SYS file looks like, what other
configuration files looks like, and what the article posted looks
like. My first guess is that the article was posted to a group or
distribution isn't accepted by your neighbors.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444
From: isjrc@dcatla.uucp (John R. Caruso)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Address rejection using REPLY 
Date: 17 Dec 92 14:23:59 EST
Organization: Digital Communications Associates, Alpharetta, GA



	Some users of news 6.1 here are reporting that the address
	chosen when one executes the REPLY from news is rejected by
	uucp mailer. However, when the same address is used in MAIL
	it is accepted.

	Has anyone else experienced this and is there a fix?

	Thanks.


John Caruso
gatech!dcatla!isjrc