HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: mail2news patch for mailing to multiple newsgroups
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 16:19:29 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <gmypbjln@csv.warwick.ac.uk> cudep@warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson) writes:
>>We ship the mail sent by news into a <local>.sysadmin group...
>
>Which won't work very well if your inews is shafted for some reason,
>and you want to see the reports without searching log files.  Mail is good
>because it notifies you of problems, rather than you having to look for them.

You can adopt a hybrid approach, of course, by having the looking done
automatically, with a mailed report when something is found.  Which is
exactly what newswatch and newsdaily 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
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: rsalz@osf.org (Rich Salz)
Subject: Re: INN (v1.1) observations so far
Keywords: INN
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 13:24:32 GMT

In <1992Sep04.182457.5219@ecst.csuchico.edu> warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy) writes:
>		  I'm a little worried about people being
>		able to read news off the feed host, however.  In the past
>		I've let the other admins read from our host so they could
>		check us if they thought they were going to have problems.
If you want to let them read, add them to your nnrp.access file and tell
them to do "mode reader".  HOWEVER, this should not be necessary.  A newsfeed
can do HEAD and STAT commands, which should be enough to help them debug
their exchanges with you.

>  One thing that seems to cause a small hoard of problems is news.daily.  I'm
>currently starting up innd as "innd -d"
It wasn't intended that you run with -d in a production environment.  That
is almost definitely causing all of your problems.  Try putting
	if (Debug)
	    return;
as the first statement in the ReopenLog function in innd/innd.c and see
if that makes it work.

>  A small configuration problem seems to exist with one of the variables in the
>news.daily script, "INNDDIR=/usr/local/news/innd".
I don't understand what you're asking about here.  The _PATH_INNDDIR is
discussed in the Install manual.  The line in question will be updated by
subst when you configure.

>  I haven't tracked it down yet, but news.daily also spits out a "illegal io"
>message.
Probably related to running with -d and flushing logs.

>  Heh.  INN, the only server you can say "go fish" to (after you throttle it).
That's really funny!
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: rsalz@osf.org (Rich Salz)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 13:40:01 GMT

In <BuBws1.MIn@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>NNTP in principle could support more detailed access control, although this
>is complicated by problems like the authentication question (is the user on
>the other end of the network really who he says he is?).  It also could do
>news-specific optimizations.  The current implementation doesn't do a lot
>about either of these.

Henry is talking about the NNTP reference implementation, nntp1.5 (soon to
be nntp1.6) maintained by Stan Barber.

My NNTP implementation, INN, addresses both of these issues.  It does a
handful of optimizations and it at least lets you do user/password
authentication on a wide variety of ways.  I intend to support GSSAPI at
some point.
	/r$
From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: INN (v1.1) observations so far
Date: 5 Sep 1992 09:27:11 +0200
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
NNTP-Posting-Host: 127.0.0.1
Keywords: INN

In news.software.b, article <1992Sep04.182457.5219@ecst.csuchico.edu>,
  warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy) writes:
> 
> 	(c)  The configuration files are pretty straightforward.  It's very
> 		easy to add feeds.  I'm a little worried about people being
> 		able to read news off the feed host, however.  In the past
> 		I've let the other admins read from our host so they could
> 		check us if they thought they were going to have problems.
> 
This is fixable. Most admins really only want to see whether a given article
is present on your system, so "head <ID>" works. If they want more,
"mode reader" spawns off your choice of NNTP server.

>   A small configuration problem seems to exist with one of the variables in the
> news.daily script, "INNDDIR=/usr/local/news/innd".  If I have a weakness, it's
> hating other people's directory structure.  In my config.data file, it's
> not clear what this is supposed to be.  "_PATH_INNDDIR" is the obvious choice,
> and it defaults to the same thing, but I've changed it and it seems to have
> caught on everywhere else.
> 
See the line above the INNDDIR= in news.daily -- this is subst'ed from
_PATH_INNDDIR automagically.  Don't worry about not liking directory
structures; mine isn't too standard either.  ;-)

NB: The -u option to makehistory doesn't work; a fix will be in patch 2.

-- 
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
		-- Edgar R. Fiedler
-- 
Matthias Urlichs  --  urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de   /(o\
Humboldtstrasse 7 -- 7500 Karlsruhe 1 -- Germany  --  +49-721-9612521     \o)/
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: cnews feature history/test question
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 15:06:14 GMT

Rob Lingelbach:
>Where, if anywhere, in the May 1992 release of c-news can I find a
>history of features/fixes by release/patch date?  I'd like to know how this
>release differs from the one I have patched 15-Dec-1990.

I don't think there is such a history in the performance release.  If you
can still find the patches to the production release, the start of each
should describe what it changes.  README.new describes the major changes
in the performance release; they include faster inews, faster and simpler
ihave/sendme, news replication, faster processing for sites with many
outgoing feeds, delayed sendsys replies, and newgroup behaviour
selectable by control file.

>I remember reading somewhere in the documentation that one can do a
>"test install" of a new version of cnews in a separate directory, for
>example, and then after testing mv it where it belongs. 
>Could someone remind me where to find this info?

doc/b-to-c has a brief description.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff

``Leave the evil grasping to us.'' - A. L. Arms, UNIX licensing, WECo.
From: james@sol1.poly-east-london.ac.uk (James Andrews)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Can't get cnews to compile on a solbourne
Date: 9 Sep 1992 04:48:14 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

The solbourne is a sparc machine running a sunos 4.1 look-a-like
operating system. I am trying to get the may '92 version of c-news to go on it.
In the build script I was pretty sure about most of the questions except
"C news has libraries for several kinds of Unix"
and there I took the default of v7, should I have put bsd42?

Then when the build script had finished doit.root ran okay but doit.bin
wouldn't run as bin doit.news wouldnt run as news and so on.

doit.bin fails when trying to compile relay/hdrdefs.c

and thats as far as I got.  What am I doing wrong?
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: casper@fwi.uva.nl (Casper H.S. Dik)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Keywords: NNTP
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:36:32 GMT

ntmtv!harthc@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Howard Hart) writes:

>>Apart from efficiency the main argument that has been used here
>>against NFS is that news is currently on our gateway machine, and
>>if we ran NFS on that machine it would be a major security hole.
>>I don't know how serious a worry this is.

>Don't forget that wonderful feature of NFS when partitions are mounted
>read/write (such as the case where you have to mount the news batch
>directory read/write for users to post articles). Don't know about
>other machines, but on Sun's, if you loose the server, the client
>hangs indefinitely (I was told at one time that NFS writes have
>higher interrupt priority than mouse clicks, so I do mean complete
>screen/window lockup). That alone makes NNTP worthwhile at our site.
>It was very interesting when our old NFS-moounted newsserver went down
>and 300+ machines lab-wide suddenly quit responding--all for a marginally
>(management-wise) supported USENET feed. I'd strongly recommend NNTP-only.

My experience is the opposite. We read via NFS (exported/mounted
read-only) but post via NNTP (to prevent multiple writers).
Prior to that, we did everything via nntp. Building multiple nn
databases wasn't a good idea, of course, but even without that NNTP
performed worse than NFS for reading.

Mounting the filesystems interruptable prevents hangs with no way out.
If the news server goes down, noone, except those reading news, suffers.

This might require SunOS 4.1 or higher, though, as interrupting NFS
wasn't properly implemented and getwd(3) did complicate things in
an NFS environment as well.

Casper
-- 
						|	Casper H.S. Dik
						|	casper@fwi.uva.nl
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Is something slowing down my c-news?
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 01:36:11 GMT

Kevin O'Gorman:
>One of them is a fairly fast machine, but news is excruciatingly slow on
>it all of a sudden.  The other has the same version of C-news and is
>running fine, albeit with a comparatively restricted feed.

The usual cause of this is that expire hasn't been completing and thus
dbz is getting repeated hash table overflows, which can get slow
eventually.  When expire builds the new dbz index files, it sizes them
appropriately for recent traffic.

>Also, I looked this morning at 9 AM, and found expire still running, having
>been started at 5 AM.  Granted, this machine takes a very full feed, but isn't
>this a lot of time?

That is indeed odd; are you on a 386 (see doc/trouble and doc/problems if
so)?
-- 
Geoff Collyer		world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff

``Leave the evil grasping to us.'' - A. L. Arms, UNIX licensing, WECo.
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard Warner)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Organization: San Jose State University - Math/CS Dept.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:33:26 GMT

fillmore@emr1.emr.ca (Bob Fillmore 992-2832) writes:

>In article <Bu8pDC.HJ5@ux1.isu.edu> axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) writes:
>>simmdan@ux1.isu.edu = ted@telematics.com (Ted Goldblatt) writes:
>>
>>> Date: 4 Sep 92 21:53:59 GMT
>>> Sender: simmdan@ux1.isu.edu (Daniel Simmons)
>>> Organization: Telematics Intl., Inc.; Ft. Lauderdale, FL
>>
>>> Is it the sense of the net (:-)) that having the news server
>>> feed the news readers via nntp is preferable to feeding via
>>> (read only) exported NFS filesystems, or vice versa?
>>
>In rrn, when listing article titles in a newsgroup, or asking to
>read the first article in a group, there was a long delay (with periods
>marching across the screen) while the NNTP client was interrogating
>the server to see if the next article exists.  The protocol apparently
>had no way for the server to tell the client the number of the first
>article in a group.

While NNTP may have some failings, this is not one of them.  If this
behaviour is indeed true, it is a poorly implemented client.  Read the
RFC - a GROUP command returns the number of the first, last, and a count
of articles.  If a client does not use this information, fault the 
client, not the protocol.

>-- 
>Bob Fillmore, Technical Services Division          email: fillmore@emr.ca
>  Information Management Branch,                   BIX:   bfillmore      
>  Energy, Mines, & Resources Canada                Voice: (613) 992-2832
>  580 Booth St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  K1A 0E4  FAX:   (613) 996-2953    
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: tale@ten.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Subject: Re: BNF rule for newsgroup names?
Organization: UUNET Technologies, Inc.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:49:21 GMT

In <BuLB9y.7Dp@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes:

   >Is "0123" a valid groupname?

   Yes.  There is ancient precedent: net.micro.432 (the incredibly slow Ada
   engine from Intel).

There is currently a discussion in alt.config about creating new
subgroups of alt.native.  One proposed was alt.native.1492.  Note that
alt.native only recently passed that number article in traffic.
Though well-written software should be able to deal with such things
gracefully, such a name is potentially troublesome.

Just say no to all-digit group components.
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: eggert@twinsun.com (Paul Eggert)
Subject: Re: Messages rejected by UUNET (was: INN Message-ID validation)
Organization: Twin Sun, Inc
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 00:46:35 GMT

gritton@colorado.et.byu.edu (Jamie Gritton) writes:

>   Since so much news goes through UUNET ... the list of their rejected
>messages would be a welcome addition to the stats UUNET
>already posts. How feasible would posting such a list be?

Quite feasible.  I believe it's on UUnet's to-do list.
For a preview of a subset of the Message-ID rejections,
please see my weekly news.admin.misc posting
entitled ``nonconforming news Message-IDs of last week''.
From: root@melpar.UUCP (Super user)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: cnews testing questions
Keywords: cnews bnews sco
Date: 8 Sep 92 20:47:10 GMT
Organization: E-Systems, Melpar Division, Falls Church, VA

I have installed cnews on a sco box and I want to test that it is working correctly before I replace the system that is currently handleing our mail/news service.  What do I need to do to the other system (SCO XENIX w/bnews, BNU) so that it can be a temporary news feed for the new machine (SCO UNIX w/cnews, BNU)?

I have added an entry to both  "sys" files, and also made the appropriate change to Permissions.

Please respond via E-Mail if possible...

thanks...

Rich Martin
E-Systems, Melpar Division
...uunet!melpar!rmartin
From: jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: incoming news in Cnews
Date: 11 Sep 92 16:47:54 GMT
Organization: Ahlstrom Filtration - Chattanooga,TN

OK, I give up.

I have compiled and installed Cnews on a 486 running SCO Unix 3.2v2.0.
I compiled with the GNU C compiler (gcc version 1.39), I did use the optimizer
(everyone says it's OK with gcc), I did not use the stdio routines, and I
chose everything SCO supported (i.e. I did not choose to substitute Cnews
routines in place of ones SCO already had).

I also ran "makes rs" to run the regression tests, and only the one that was
documented as broken failed.

I installed Cnews in its own hierarchy (/usr/local/news, with spool, lib, bin,
and bin.pub [for rnews, etc] below that) so that I could run in parallel and
have tried to feed it news.  My active file is from my Bnews system, and
the history file is empty.

Here's the problem: no matter the source of the news (I've fed compressed
batches to 'rnews', uncompressed single articles to 'inews -h', and have
used 'postnews' to compose new articles), when I run 'newsrun' I get lines
like the one below in 'log':

Sep 11 12:43:58.000 tiamat - <BuFAGE.D5y@tiamat.fsc.com> unapproved article in moderated group(s) `tn.test'

This news group is definitely NOT moderated, and neither are most of the other
groups which end up getting this message.

Help!  What's going on here?  I'm going to start trying different permutations
of some of the build parameters to see if I can get something to work, but
I'd rather not use trial and error if someone else knows what's going on.

Thanks.
------------- 
James B. O'Connor                                     jim@tiamat.fsc.com
Information Technology Manager                        voice 615/821-4022 x651
Ahlstrom Filtration, Inc.                             fax   615/821-0616
=========
	"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President,
	 should, on no account, be allowed to do the job."
	 Douglas Adams, _The Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz)
Subject: Re: Testing INN's newsfeeds file.
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 21:07:50 GMT

In <1992Sep6.231714.12213@PA.dec.com> brister@pa.dec.com (James Brister) writes:

| 	1) Is there a way to have inn report where it would send an article
| 	   given a specified newsgroup and distribution without actually
| 	   doing it?

I don't think so, but this would be something nice to add (and quite easy).

| 	2) If I want to (for example) block rec and any
| 	   newsgroup under it except for rec.bicycles.soc, then which of 
| 	   these patterns would I use?

| 		!rec*, rec.bicycles.soc
| 		!rec, !rec.*, rec.bicycles.soc

| 	   (the wildmat(3) man page seems to imply the first one).

Either (given standard group namings).  The second will stop group "rec"
itself, which normally doesn't exist, so the !rec entry is probably not
going to do anything useful, then stop all rec.* groups which is your
aim, then allow rec.bicycles.soc which is your other aim.

The first will stop all groups that start "rec" which includes rec.foo
but also recreation* records* recycled* and anything else similar.
Then it will let through rec.bicycles.soc.   Assuming that you, like
most of us, only have rec.* groups and not rec or recreation or
recycled etc, then the two will do exactly the same thing.   What's
more, you can use either interchangably, it won't make any run time
difference at all.

| 	3) Is there a flag in the newfeeds file I haven't seen that 
| 	   will cause the entire article being processed to be written
| 	   down a pipe to a subprocess. (like having '::' as the third 
| 	   field in a CNews sys file).

No.

kre
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: rsalz@osf.org (Rich Salz)
Subject: Re: INN Message-ID validation
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 13:26:01 GMT

In <1992Sep11.024552.20481@grouper.mkt.csd.harris.com> wdh@grouper.mkt.csd.harris.com (W. David Higgins) writes:
>[INN's] Message-ID validation is much stricter than either Bnews
>or Cnews.
Yes.  It uses a modified version of Paul Eggert's code to make sure
that Message-ID's have strict RFC conformance.
	/r$
From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: FAQ retriever.
Date: 13 Sep 92 06:58:07 GMT
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <1992Sep11.194301.21530@vlsi.polymtl.ca> hans@vlsi.polymtl.ca (Hans Deragon (Hiv91)) writes:
>Is there any FAQ retriever out there?  By FAQ retrieber, I mean a news
>client which only function is to pick up FAQs from the server and save
>them into files.  Files should only be updated if a new version of a FAQ
>is found in news.answer.

"rkive" from comp.sources.misc can be used to archive faqs, but it has
to run on the server.  Or, you could educate the SA of the server to
respect the "Expires:" headers in news.answers, so that all news.answers
postings stay around until superceded by newer versions.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
Psroff 3.0 info: psroff-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
Ferret list: ferret-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
From: blarson@blars.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: BNF rule for newsgroup names?
Date: 15 Sep 92 03:08:41 GMT

In article <BuLB9y.7Dp@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>>Is "0123" a valid groupname?
>
>Yes.  There is ancient precedent: net.micro.432 (the incredibly slow Ada
>engine from Intel).

And there is almost as old figuring out that allowing such names was a
realy bad idea with the then-existing software.  (Still is with most of
the newer packages.)  All numeric newsgroup names were eliminated at the
time of the great renaming (there was also a 6809 group).  When the
new news rfc is written, hopefully it will ban such names.

-- 
blarson@usc.edu			usc!blarson			blarson@zog
		C news and rn for os9/68k!
I think I hear a scream.  A great many dramatic situations begin with a scream.
							-- Barbarella
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: schnoebe@convex.com (Eric Schnoebelen)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Followup-To: news.admin.technical
Organization: USENET news support, CONVEX Computer Corp, Richardson, Tx. USA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:37:49 GMT

ntmtv!harthc@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Howard Hart) writes:
- >Apart from efficiency the main argument that has been used here
- >against NFS is that news is currently on our gateway machine, and
- >if we ran NFS on that machine it would be a major security hole.
- >I don't know how serious a worry this is.

	The security hole depends upon what is being exported by the
gateway, and what lives between the gateway and the internet.  At
CONVEX, we have a router that is the actual connection to the
internet, and it is very selective about what ports and packets get
through.

- Don't forget that wonderful feature of NFS when partitions are mounted
- read/write (such as the case where you have to mount the news batch
- directory read/write for users to post articles). Don't know about
- other machines, but on Sun's, if you loose the server, the client
- hangs indefinitely (I was told at one time that NFS writes have
- higher interrupt priority than mouse clicks, so I do mean complete
- screen/window lockup).

	We don't mount our news partitions read/write on the client
machines, rather we mount them soft,read-only, and then use NNTP to post
(since we already have NNTP running for the transport.)  This allows
folks to use their favorite tools to interogate articles (grep, cat,
less, etc) while not locking things down to an NFS server.

-                        That alone makes NNTP worthwhile at our site.
- It was very interesting when our old NFS-moounted newsserver went down
- and 300+ machines lab-wide suddenly quit responding--all for a marginally
- (management-wise) supported USENET feed. I'd strongly recommend NNTP-only.

	We have found that the number of NNTP readers used by our
company puts too much of a strain on the NNTP server.  And news is an
internally supported tool, since many projects use news (as well as
UofIll notes) for communication.

	I have no problems recommending the NFS/NNTP mixture, since we
have used it with great success.

	If you don't want or need NNTP, you could always set the
systems up so that posting was done by mail to the server, leaving the
reading via NFS.

-- 
Eric Schnoebelen		eric@cirr.com		schnoebe@convex.com
    The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like
    someone beat their head on the keyboard. After working with it... I
	    can see why! - Harry Skelton (harry@usrgrp)
Newsgroups: news.software.b