From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Subject: Re: I have the newsgroups list, now what?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 14:42:30 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.170723.21396@avalon.nwc.navy.mil> dejesus@pluto.nwc.navy.mil (Francisco X DeJesus) writes:

   Allright... I can grab an up-to-date "newsgroups" file via ftp or get the
   one that's posted here. That's not a problem. The problem is:

	   1- how do I add the missing newsgroups to my active file?

You don't want to use the "newsgroups" file to add newsgroups to your
system.  There are two main methods of creating missing newsgroups at
your site:

a) "checkgroups".  You run a checkgroups control message LOCALLY (it's
*very* important to only run it locally, so that the entire network
doesn't get hosed by it), which should cause a mail message to be sent
to you telling you what "addgroup" commands to run (as news, assuming
that your news system is set up to be owned by "news", rather than as
root) to create the missing newsgroups.

You can get the checkgroups postings as follows:

Subject: Checkgroups message (with INET groups)
Subject: Checkgroups message (without INET groups)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.announce.newgroups

Available in the indicated USENET newsgroup(s), or via anonymous ftp from
pit-manager.mit.edu (18.172.1.27) in the files:

/pub/usenet/news.admin/Checkgroups_message_(with_INET_groups)
/pub/usenet/news.admin/Checkgroups_message_(without_INET_groups)

Also available from mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu by sending a mail
message containing any or all of:

send usenet/news.admin/Checkgroups_message_(with_INET_groups)
send usenet/news.admin/Checkgroups_message_(without_INET_groups)

Send a message containing "help" to get general information about the
mail server.

b) Get a list of newsgroups that includes information about whether or
not the groups are moderated from some other source.  The most common
one is the active file on ftp.uu.net.  Then, write an awk script or
something to compare the first and last columns in the file you got to
the first and last columsn in your active file (i.e., you want to
ignore the article numbers in the active file when doing your
comparison), in order to figure out which newsgroups are either
missing from your active file or are in it but are not marked
correctly (e.g., they're not marked moderated when they should be).
Then, use "addgroup", "delgroup" and "chamod" by hand to fix up your
active file to make it look like the one you got.

Note that option (b) will generally produce a more complete active
file, since the active file on uunnet has pretty much every newsgroup
you could imagine, whereas the checkgroups messages only hav the main
hierarchies.  However, (a) is more automatic, whereas (b) has to be
done by hand, and you have to choose which newsgroups you want to
create and which ones you don't if you do (b).

	   2- when that is done, how can I make it so my system gets these
	      newsgroups' articles from its feed? If this is automatic then
	      I may have another problem, because I have several newsgroups
	      in my active file, with no articles, though I can telnet (NNTP
	      port) to my feed host and manually see they have articles for
	      them! 

Once a newsgroup has been created properly with "addgroup", you have
to make sure that your site's sys file entry at your feed site
transmits the newsgroup in question.  If you don't know what your
site's sys file entry is at your feed site, contact them and ask for
it, and then read the documentation about sys files in the news
distribution in order to find out how to change it, and then send an
updated version back to your feed site and ask them to install it.

Note that all of the commands I've mentioned above assume that you're
using C news, which is what I have experience with.  It's usually a
good idea, with news as with anything else, to mention what software
you're using and what version it is when posting a question to the
net.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens						jik@MIT.Edu
MIT Information Systems/Athena		    Moderator, news.answers
    (Send correspondence related to the news.answers newsgroup
	{and ONLY correspondence related to the newsgroup}
		 to news-answers-request@MIT.Edu.)
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