HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:01:25 GMT
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.

In article <BvKGHw.LFG@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
: In article <BvIK7q.11u@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> xcea@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Chad Adams) writes:
: >I was thinking that real frequent running of newsrun (cound be more
: >then one at once) cound be doing it...
: 
: Newsrun does internal locking to make sure only one copy is running at once.
: 
: Incidentally, there really isn't a lot of reason to have a perl program as
: a front end just to decide whether it's worth running newsrun.  Newsrun
: itself will decide whether there's anything for it to do quite quickly
: and fairly efficiently (it surprised me, in fact, how quickly it decides
: that there's no work to do).

Shoot, even I don't use Perl for that.  Nobody runs newsrun THAT often.
You'll have to work a LOT harder than that if you want to catch Henry doing
something stupid, and even then there's no guarantee you'll succeed...  :-)

Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
	<BvKGHw.LFG@zoo.toronto.edu> <1992Oct5.210125.8071@netlabs.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 01:13:02 GMT

Larry> == Larry Wall <lwall@netlabs.com> 

 Larry> Nobody runs newsrun THAT often.

From the news crontab:
* * * * *       /usr/lib/newsbin/input/newsrun

There is a comment above it.  The comment reads "ckd is insane".
The comment is correct.

(The commentor is looking at INN. :-)
--
Christopher K. Davis      |       NET.INSIGHTS INTO ARTISTIC CRITICISM:
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   | ``[Y]ou don't cure bad art by locking it all up
System Administrator, EFF | in one museum, you cure it by throwing tomatoes
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   | at bad artists.'' --Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
From: sergio@Ingres.COM (Sergio L Aponte)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: More on "cancel" setup
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:22:15 GMT
Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company, Alameda CA 94501
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Ok. Let's see.

cancel won't work. I found out my newsreader "posts" and article that
looks like this :

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: sergio@coqui (Sergio Aponte)
Subject: cancel <1992Sep30.185315.10127@foo.ingres.com>
Newsgroups: rti.test
Control: cancel <1992Sep30.185315.10127@foo.ingres.com>
Reply-To: sergio@coqui (Sergio Aponte)

Article cancelled 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

inews finds the Control: line, and looks for a newsgroup called "control" in
the active file, which I don't have. So I added control with an "x". Now inews
says you can't post to the group, and fails.  I added control with a "y", and
cancel works.

Problems :

	1) I don't want to have a control group.

	2) If I HAVE to have it, could it not be invisible ("x") to the users?

	2a) If I change inews to ignore the "x" in the active file, will
	relaynews have a heart attack later?

	3) Is there a way to set it up so that this cancel article gets posted
	to the newsgroup in the Newsgroups: line and not to "control", and
	have it replace the article in question with the new contents "Article
	cancelled"?

Any ideas welcome...
--
===============================================================   _|||_
Sergio L. Aponte, SMTS @ Ingres, an ASK Company                   <*,*>
Internet : sergio@coqui.ingres.com                                [`-']  Keko
UUCP     : {sun,mtxinu,pyramid,pacbell}!ingres!coqui!sergio       _"_"_  Jones
From: brendan@cygnus.com (Brendan Kehoe)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Current state of mail<-->news software
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:38:49 GMT
Reply-To: brendan@cygnus.com
Organization: Cygnus Support, Palo Alto CA; Phone +1 415 322 3811
In-reply-to: ajs@msdrl.com's message of Fri, 2 Oct 92 13:32:35 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.133235.28058@msdrl.com> ajs@msdrl.com (Anthony Starks) writes:

   What is the current state of the art in bi-directional mail<-->news
   software?

It's called "newsgate".  Among other places, you can find it on
ftp.cs.widener.edu in the directory pub/src/news as `newsgate.tar.Z'.

--
Brendan Kehoe                                               brendan@cygnus.com
Cygnus Support, Palo Alto, CA                                  +1 415 322 3811
                                                 Re-elect Clinton/Gore in '96!
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: scott@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Scott Hazen Mueller)
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 16:43:28 GMT

In article <BvnMqq.B94@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>Switching to polling wiped out a terrible tangle of portability problems in
>one fell swoop... and most users, once they get used to the idea, don't
>really care whether there's a few minutes' delay in article posting.

Using the old inews, which attempted to start relaynews, I noticed (on my
system at least) that if the news system was locked, so that inews stalled,
the backgrounded inews job would die if the user logged out.  This was fixed
(in one sense) in the Performance Release, since inews became synchronous
in the respect of not returning until the article was safely in in.coming.
I consider this much nicer behavior, and well worth the few minutes' delay.

-- 
Moderator, news.admin.technical; submissions to natech@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG.
Moderator, ba.announce; submissions to ba-announce@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG.
Moderator, rec.arts.sf.announce; submissions to sf-announce@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG.
SF-Bay Public-Access Unix 408-254-0246/1032/9882 login newuser password public
From: james@sol1.east-london.ac.uk (Semiotic Liberation Front)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: help wanted on getting edinburgh colour book software to take news
Date: 2 Oct 1992 05:35:31 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

I am trying to get a host with edinburgh colour book software to accept news.
there is an NSAP entry for .FTP.NEWS but everytime someone at another site
tries to get through the other site gets code 61- no NIFTP listener.

Are there any email lists for questions on Edingburgh colour book software?

I have cnews installed on a solbourne: anyone else running a sparc with
edingburgh colour book?
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 15:37:36 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1aplpgINNfjr@rodan.UU.NET> rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz) writes:
>>  Our users have desided that
>>they will die if they can not post to a newsgroup in a live demo and
>>have it show up there in under a minute.
>You might prefer the performance characteristics of INN.  One of them is
>synchronous postings:  when inews returns, your article has been written
>to the spool directory...

I hate to put in a plug for the competition :-), but Rich is probably right.
If you're moving news by NNTP, and if synchronous behavior and low
propagation delays are vital to you, and if machine resources are not that
big a concern, INN is worth a good hard look.

The C News crew *does* question the validity of some of those assumptions,
for most sites.  We tend to feel that news is not that time-critical and
the resources are better employed doing useful work. :-)  Our software does
reflect this view.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: dietrich@dxcern.cern.ch (Dietrich Wiegandt)
Subject: Article cross-posted to moderated group 'escapes'.
Summary: Article cross-posted to moderated group not sent to moderator
Keywords: cross-posting, moderated group
Reply-To: dietrich@dxcern.cern.ch
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 09:19:33 GMT


Hello,
this may be a well known feature of Cnews (1991 version including
patch of 22-Dec-1991).

When a news article is posted to several news groups including a moderated
one, it is NOT mailed to the moderator of that news group, but simply
distributed the usual way.  The Newsgroups: line still contains the
moderated news group, and some system the article passes through may
realize that this group is in fact moderated and therefore sends the
article to the moderator.  When the moderator receives this mail he sees
that mail and news do not come from the same system and hence asks the
news administrator at the site where the article was posted to fix the problem.

Is there anything that can be done about this?

Dietrich Wiegandt
CERN CN Division
CH-1211 Geneve 23
Switzerland
From: alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: cnews perf. release doesn't quite like SunOS 4.1.3... I think.
Date: 3 Oct 92 01:07:38 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

I just built the performance release on 4.1.3 on a sparc 2.

Compiling with gcc without "-traditional" gave many complaints. No big deal,
that's what the flag's for.

Compiling with gcc -traditional, or with cc, produced an error in
include/libc: conflicting type for umask in line 33. After looking through
/usr/include, I just commented out the declaration of umask in libc and
all seemed well. Is this the correct response?

Also, various modules produced complaints about "static declaration for xxx
follows non-static". I didn't bother looking into this. Is there a problem?

A trivial test run produced no errors, but I didn't run expire.

Last question: I remember seeing a couple of fixes for the perf release, but
I don't think they were included in the cnews.sh.Z that I picked up. Where
are they? One such buglet bit me (the alternative ctl scripts) but I just
wasted the directory (as seemed appropriate) and all was well.

Thanks,
--
Alexis Rosen   Owner/Sysadmin,
PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC.
alexis@panix.com
{uupsi,cmcl2}!panix!alexis
From: ianm@icsbelf.co.uk (Ian Moran)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Cnews doustat
Date: 2 Oct 92 11:48:34 GMT
Organization: ICS Computing Group Ltd., Belfast
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Hello!

I am using the performance release of C-News on an RS6000 running
AIX 3.1. The spacefor script is broken since doustat fails with the
following error message.

doustat: cannot do ustat(/usr/spool/news/in.coming) (A system call 
received a parameter that is not valid.)

Has anyone fixed this?

Regards

 Ian
-- 

Ian Moran                     Internet:  ianm@icsbelf.co.uk
ICS Computing Group Ltd.      UUCP:      ...{uknet,uunet,mcsun}!icsbelf!ianm
Belfast, N. Ireland.          Fidonet:   2:440/59.5, 2:257/10.1, 2:252/309.6
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
	<BvIBHL.Dtz@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 19:07:31 GMT

Chad Adams:
>			$r = system('/bin/sh /usr/local/lib/newsbin/input/newsrun');

newsrun does run explode, but it's not clear how this script gets invoked
by nntpxmit; what runs this script?  Make sure that this script is
running as your news userid, since newsrun needs to run as news.
-- 
Geoff Collyer				world!geoff, world.std.com!geoff
``closed is Open'' - not George Orwell on ``Open'' Systems
open, a. admitting visitors or customers; not yet settled or decided (OPD)
``and it's Open For Business like a cheap bordello'' - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: cnews perf. release doesn't quite like SunOS 4.1.3... I think.
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 00:35:33 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <BvKKu7.Dpy@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>>... Geoff really shouldn't have been declaring umask() at all...
>
>Possibly so, but if umask doesn't return an integer, existing correct
>programs will break.  The real problem is that POSIX gratuitously changed
>the return type of umask (among others).

Actually, what they did was made it a typedefed type, mostly to accommodate
a possible change to unsigned (which shouldn't break existing code).  Some
suppliers have done some dubious things with this new-found freedom, but
I wouldn't class that as POSIX's fault.

>>>... "static declaration for xxx follows non-static"...
>>... another dubious programming practice that
>>we need to spend some time stamping out.
>
>No, actually this is another between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place, can't-win
>situation: some compilers can't handle forward declarations of static
>functions, others demand them.  The only solution that makes them all
>happy is to write Pascal-like code that puts all static functions before
>their calls.

Or alternatively, don't bother making them static.  (This has problems
if they're part of widely-used library functions, but is otherwise
not a big deal.)  My personal inclination, though, is still to classify
disagreements among the declarations as bad programming practice, today.
Given that there's no way to make everyone happy, one can still aim for
the majority... and most modern compilers, and ANSI C as well, say that
the forward declaration should agree with the definition.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: ajs@msdrl.com (Anthony Starks)
Subject: Current state of mail<-->news software
Organization: Merck Research Laboratories
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 13:32:35 GMT

What is the current state of the art in 
bi-directional mail<-->news software?
--
Anthony Starks		Merck Research Laboratories		ajs@msdrl.com
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: master batches? I don't see any difference...
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 18:06:02 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Oct6.085306.11506@panix.com> alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>The documentation in the perf release doesn't seem to document batching
>correctly (this is not a complaint, just an observation). I think I know
>what's supposed to be going on, in general, but some very simple tests
>don't seem to be showing behavior any different from the prior release.
>Does the new scheme kick in only when there are more than X sites?

It's there regardless, but it's strictly a matter of collusion between
relaynews and doexplode, both of which are essentially internal to newsrun.
Modulo a bug or two, once newsrun has finished, the results are identical.
If you pretend that the exploder stuff is part of relaynews (as I in fact
argued it should be, but Geoff ended up separating them, probably for good
reason), the documentation remains accurate.  Just squint a bit. :-)
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)
Subject: Attempting to locate description of log msg - no subscribed groups
Reply-To: lvirden@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)
Organization: Nedriv Software and Shoe Shiners, Uninc.
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 07:46:21 GMT

There are a number of groups in the active file for this machine, yet there
is also msgs that end up:
... no subscribed groups in `oar.noc'

Why would having an entry in the active file not be enough if we are getting
the articles?
-- 
Larry W. Virden                 UUCP: osu-cis!chemabs!lvirden
Same Mbox: BITNET: lvirden@cas  INET: lvirden@cas.org
Personal: 674 Falls Place,   Reynoldsburg, OH 43068-1614
America Online: lvirden@aol.com
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 22:15:31 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <BvIK7q.11u@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> xcea@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Chad Adams) writes:
>I was thinking that real frequent running of newsrun (cound be more
>then one at once) cound be doing it...

Newsrun does internal locking to make sure only one copy is running at once.

Incidentally, there really isn't a lot of reason to have a perl program as
a front end just to decide whether it's worth running newsrun.  Newsrun
itself will decide whether there's anything for it to do quite quickly
and fairly efficiently (it surprised me, in fact, how quickly it decides
that there's no work to do).
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: corywest@rice.edu (Cory West)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Problems with spacefor on SunOS 4.1.1 and 4.1.2?
Date: 26 Sep 92 22:52:29 GMT
Organization: Well, none really, but I know where my socks are!


	Hello all.  We are running the performance release of Cnews
on SunOS 4.1.1 and 4.1.2.  For some strange reason, in upgrading from
the previous Cnews release to the performance release, spacefor in
newswatch broke.  Spacefor, when called from other places, seems to
work fine, but in newswatch it produces a usage message and dies.
	
	Has anyone else had this problem?  Do I just need to sit down
and track through the scripts for some obscure typo that will fix
the spacefor call?  I suspect that _someone_ else must have run into this
since I am seeing this on two separate machines here.

	Anyway, any help is appreciated.  Thanks!


			Cory West, corywest@rice.edu
			E-Newsie in Training
--
Cory West    	  | School: corywest@rice.edu       | Rice University, '94
P.O. Box 2011     | Home: cory@lambada.hou.tx.us    | Team Wiess! 
Houston, TX 77252 | POP Mail: corywest-pop@rice.edu | Phone: (713) 630-8858
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: COMBSTM@APPSTATE.EDU (*Terry M. Combs)
Subject: INN on ULTRIX 4.2
Organization: APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 23:00:19 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

Has anyone tried to implement INN on ULTRIX 4.2 - RISC?

I am particularly interested in the issues of the syslogd daemon, config.data
used, and what to do about certain compile errors.

- Terry Combs                              Appalachian State University
  Bitnet:    COMBSTM@APPSTATE              Boone, NC 28608
  Internet:  COMBSTM@Appstate.Edu          (704)262-6297 



- Terry Combs                              Appalachian State University
  Bitnet:    COMBSTM@APPSTATE              Boone, NC 28608
  Internet:  COMBSTM@Appstate.Edu          (704)262-6297 
             
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: larry@gator.rn.com (Larry Snyder)
Subject: cnews performance release log file
Organization: The Gator Conferencing System 219-289-3745 
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:04:35 GMT

I'm only getting whole time (ie: hours:minutes:seconds:000 <-
followed by 3 zeros for fraction of a second) in my cnews log
file.  How do I get this to correctly display fraction of
a second instead of 000?

-- 
Larry Snyder                                    internet: larry@gator.rn.com
keeper of the Gator                                  uucp: uunet!gator!larry
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: bsakach@wnas.DaytonOH.NCR.COM (Brian Sakach)
Subject: Strict access control and firewalls
Organization: NCR Corporation - Worldwide Network Appl. Services - Dayton, OH
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 17:50:58 GMT


We are in the process of implementing strict access control for news
through our external and internal firewalls.  We currently receive
an NNTP feed via PSI.  We would like to receive news batches and pass 
them through the internal firewall using uux.

One possible solution is to replace the current NNTP feed with UUCP 
batches over TCP/IP to machine extnews and pass it to machine intnews.
I say `replace' because I have to eliminate all news software from 
the extnews host.  I wouldn't be able to use any external NNTP feeds 
since the history file wouldn't be there.

/----------\ /\    |-----|    |-------|    |-----|    |-------|
|          |/  \   | Ext |    |       |    | Int |    |       |
| Internet |    \--|  F  |----|extnews|----|  F  |----|intnews|
|          |       |-----|    |       |    |-----|    |       |
\----------/                  |-------|               |-------|

What I'd like to know is how others have isolated their internal 
network from the Internet.  Would this implementation of using UUCP
batches work?

BTW, we don't see any problems with the News software but we don't 
want to compromise our network.

-- 
* Brian.Sakach@DaytonOH.NCR.COM                                           *
Xref: sparky news.software.b:3078 news.software.nntp:1253
From: xcea@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Chad Adams)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
Date: 2 Oct 92 18:32:08 GMT
Organization: Educational Computing Network

In article <BvI4nH.ExF@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>Chad Adams:
>>Two of my feed sites have been getting these error messages.  The only
>>thing I can think of that I have changed is I put in the performance
>>releace of c-news.  Has anyone else seen these errors or know what to
>>do about them?
>>Sep 29 01:06:59 psuvax1 nntpxmit[28004]: uxa.ecn.bgu.edu xfer: explode: bfrclose couldn't find an open descriptor to close
>
>I'm not sure why nntpxmit is reporting exploder errors, but perhaps the
>exploder errors are caused by permission problems in out.going.  It looks
>like the exploder code needs to pay attention to errno to distinguish
>different errors.
>-- 
>Geoff Collyer				world!geoff, world.std.com!geoff
>``closed is Open'' - not George Orwell on ``Open'' Systems
>open, a. admitting visitors or customers; not yet settled or decided (OPD)
>``and it's Open For Business like a cheap bordello'' - Bruce Cockburn

I just thaught of one thing we do different then normal.  We run the
following script to make locally posted news be processed as soon as it
is posted.  Could this have anything to do with it?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Chad Adams  23-Sep-1992  run newsrun as soon as local article is posted
opendir(D, '/var/spool/news/in.coming');
while (1) {
	@list = readdir(D);
	rewinddir(D);
	for ($i = 2; $i <= $#list; $i++) {
		if (substr(@list[$i],11,2) eq '.t') {
			$r = system('/bin/sh /usr/local/lib/newsbin/input/newsrun');
			sleep(30);
			last; # one call processes all
		}
	}
	sleep(30);
}

Chad Adams
-- 
Chad Adams              __               Educational Computing Network
Systems Programmer     /  ) /         /  University Park, IL  USA
1-708-534-0200        /    /_  __, __/   ECN, networking in IL since 1975
c-adams@bgu.edu      (__/ / /_/_/_(_/_   "Wherever you go, there we are."
From: alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: master batches? I don't see any difference...
Date: 6 Oct 92 08:53:06 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

The documentation in the perf release doesn't seem to document batching
correctly (this is not a complaint, just an observation). I think I know
what's supposed to be going on, in general, but some very simple tests
don't seem to be showing behavior any different from the prior release.
Does the new scheme kick in only when there are more than X sites?

Thanks,
--
Alexis Rosen   Owner/Sysadmin,
PANIX Public Access Unix & Internet, NYC.
alexis@panix.com
{uupsi,cmcl2}!panix!alexis