HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com (Richard Todd)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Possible to be TOO well-connected?
Date: 19 Dec 92 03:32:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: servalan.BzHLv6.3qt
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks

thomson@zarda.macc.wisc.edu (Don Thomson) writes:

>My news server exchanges news with about six well-connected sites around the
>country and acts as the sole source of news for quite a few leaf nodes
>scattered throughout the state.  Earlier on it seemed like a good idea to
>have the redundant feeds from the several well-connected sites, but in
>analyzing my server's performance I've begun to question the wisdom of that
>choice.  I'm running Cnews and nntp.  My assumption has always been that

It's not so much the wisdom of your choice, it's the wisdom of some of the
current software you're running.  Multiple redundant newsfeeds are a Good
Thing.  But the stock C News/nntpd combination does have problems with it
unless you get a modified version of nntpd (see below).

>What I've found out is that due to less than ideal system performance, the
>lag time between nntp accepting articles and Cnews filing them away is such
>that I'm accepting a great number of duplicates simply because of the delay
>in Cnews updating the database of articles accepted in time for nntp to know
>to refuse them.  In fact, analyzing one day of data showed that nntp was
>accepting about four duplicates for every article received.  Ouch!

Yep, that's the problem.  Basically, the other nntpds don't get to know that
one nntpd has accepted the article until relaynews has accepted it and put
the entry in history.  There are two ways to solve this problem.

Method One is to install the msgidd patches to nntpd.  (Look around on
uunet.uu.net or your favorite Archie-indexed site for msgidd.shar or some
such.)  This basically sets up a daemon "msgidd" running all the time which
communicates with the nntpds accepting articles via a Unix domain socket.  
Msgidd maintains a cache of recently accepted message ids, and when nntpd
gets an IHAVE message, it firsts asks msgidd if some other nntpd has seen
this article before checking the history database.  That way, if you get 
an article from one site, and another site attempts to send the same 
article, nntpd will say "Got it", even though that particular batch of articles
hasn't made it into relaynews's clutches yet.

Method Two is to pitch the whole C News/nntpd setup and install INN.  
I gather INN avoids this problem by doing essentially the same thing as
the msgidd setup, only all inside one big daemon instead of thru IPC between
several nntp daemons and msgidd.  

--
Richard Todd	rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us
  rmtodd@servalan.uucp  New Improved Domain: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com
"If your terminal is on fire, unplug it."  -- from an official USGS memo.
From: kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Non-compliant articles, week ending 6 December 92
Date: 12 Dec 92 03:06:12 GMT
    <1992Dec8.160102.12380@pegasus.com> 
    <1992Dec10.224836.25418@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz> <Bz3vDs.Io5@unix.amherst.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences

twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:

>Every now and then I get a notification that
>news.amherst.edu has sent 2 articles with bad headers.  However,
>whenever I grep Ken's or Rich's posting for [Aa][Mm][Hh], it comes up
>blank.  What should I conclude?

If you're on the amherst.edu or xxx.amherst.edu gateway to the outside
world, then those postings likely didn't go off-site to make it into
our reports.  It's also possible that there are just too many "fascist"
sites between you and us or uunet.

However, that's probably not it at all.  As I recall, if an article is
so badly mangled that relaynews can't tell where it came from (eg, Path: 
header is missing) the log message, and hence the daily report, will say
the article came from the local site.  In any case, you should be able
to find the log entry by grepping the previous day's log for
" news.amherst.edu - ".
-- 
Kenneth Herron                                              kherron@ms.uky.edu
University of Kentucky                                         +1 606 257 2975
Dept. of Mathematics     "Your ball goes over them, it sails off the edge into
a huge cauldren of fire-breathing dragons."  "And they call this a par three?"
From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: newgroup comp.society.folklore
Date: 18 Dec 1992 01:05:22 GMT
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Dec17.193308.16619@bagend.uucp> jan@bagend.uucp (Jan Isley) writes:
>Bogus sour grapes, Jay.  Do not recieve != cannot post, but you knew that.
>newsgroups line reset.

At this site, not in active file == cannot post:
Script started on Thu Dec 17 18:52:39 1992

[read Jan's article, then Followup to it...]

File /users/jmaynard/.article saved.

Send, abort, edit, or list? s
Article not accepted by server; not posted.
inews: Unknown newsgroup alt.configinews: Unknown newsgroup alt.fan.john-palmerinews: Unknown newsgroup biz.comp.servicesNews saved in /usr/lib/news/dead.articleArticle appended to /users/jmaynard/dead.article
A copy may be temporarily found in /users/jmaynard/.article

(re-entering cbreak mode)
End of article 901 (of 902)--what next? [npq]

script done on Thu Dec 17 18:54:05 1992

Next?
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
 "Brought to you by the letters O, S, and by the number 2." -- Mike Levis
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: thomson@zarda.macc.wisc.edu (Don Thomson)
Subject: Possible to be TOO well-connected?
Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center
Date: 16 Dec 92 13:21:28

My news server exchanges news with about six well-connected sites around the
country and acts as the sole source of news for quite a few leaf nodes
scattered throughout the state.  Earlier on it seemed like a good idea to
have the redundant feeds from the several well-connected sites, but in
analyzing my server's performance I've begun to question the wisdom of that
choice.  I'm running Cnews and nntp.  My assumption has always been that
with nntp checking for articles already received I would avoid significant
duplication in the articles that I accept.

What I've found out is that due to less than ideal system performance, the
lag time between nntp accepting articles and Cnews filing them away is such
that I'm accepting a great number of duplicates simply because of the delay
in Cnews updating the database of articles accepted in time for nntp to know
to refuse them.  In fact, analyzing one day of data showed that nntp was
accepting about four duplicates for every article received.  Ouch!

There are a lot of approaches to dealing with this problem, including
improving system performance so that Cnews stays relatively caught up with
incoming articles, moving to INN (in the plans soon anyway), etc., but just
as a general rule of thumb I'd be curious about how other news
administrators feel about being too "well-connected", as I now seem to be!
--
 
----- Don Thomson ----- MACC, 1210 W. Dayton, Madison, WI  53706 -------------
    (608) 262-0138      thomson@macc.wisc.edu / thomson@wiscmacc.bitnet
From: craig@ec.uwa.oz.au (Craig Richmond - division)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Is Usenet growing really fast?
Date: 15 Dec 1992 07:02:21 GMT
Organization: The University of Western Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: decel.ecel.uwa.edu.au

tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli) writes:

>In <1992Dec4.205509.25976@reed.edu> nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar) writes:

>>We're having a hard time finding disk to put Usenet on.. Until about
>>four months ago 270 megs was enough for four days. But then we started
>>having problems - we'd run out of spool during the day on Thursday and
>>Friday.

>News doubles every, uh, damn.  Well, someone else will have to give
>that statistic.

>Anyway, be careful when tuning.  Wednesday has the most traffic.  Never
>tune durring the summer or on a school vacation.  In fact, I was
>thinking of collecting traffic samples on Thanksgiving and then one
>week later and project numbers based on that... just to show how volume
>changes for school breaks.  To do real predictions you have to sample
>data over the year.

One of the people here has a perl script that adjust expiry dates based on
the amount of disk space free so that an optimal 80% or so is left free for
the next day.  This of course fails accasionally, but mostly it works
quite well.

Craig
--
Craig Richmond.  Computer Officer -  Dept of Economics (morning) 380 3860
  University of Western Australia    Dept of Education (afternoon)
craig@ecel.uwa.edu.au Dvorak Keyboards RULE!  "Messes are only acceptable
if users make them.  Applications aren't allowed this freedom" I.M.VI 2-4
From: cudep@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: News as non-superuser?
Date: 15 Dec 1992 18:01:57 -0000
Organization: Team Limpid's Meathead With Aptitude - Kunst und Wahnsinn
NNTP-Posting-Host: spatula.csv.warwick.ac.uk

In article <1992Dec15.000845.13229@news.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>    This is a theoretical question. Can news be installed and run by
>an ordinary user? Could nntp and rn be run by a non-su to read news
>off another machine?

This is a practical answer.

I ran a news installation without any privs at another institution for a
number of years until the powers that be took it over and ran it properly.

It ran Bnews first, then various versions of Cnews.  NFS was used for reading,
NNTP was used for local posting only (I had to choose some other arbitrary
port number above 1024).  I used a hacked up file transfer method to get
the articles to me, and mail for the outgoing articles.  I couldn't use cron
to begin with, so I used self inserting at jobs.  It was far from ideal,
and I wouldn't recommend anyone does this unless there is no alternative, but
it did work *reasonably* reliably for about 3 years and didn't fall over too
often, but it did require more admin effort than doing it properly.

To answer your latter question, which might be what you *really* want,
the answer is, quite simply, YES.

Cheers,
-- 
\/ato - Ian Dickinson - NIC handle: ID17                   No-one is to molest
vato@csv.warwick.ac.uk  ...!mcsun!uknet!warwick!vato           the wombat when
/I=I/S=Dickinson/OU=CSV/O=Warwick/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/            anyone is
@c=GB@o=University of Warwick@ou=Computing Services@cn=Ian Dickinson  watching.
From: lowen@lorc.eskimo.com (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Is Usenet growing really fast?
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 10:39:54 -0500
Organization: LORC Enterprises

In <1gjvttINN4d0@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> craig@ec.uwa.oz.au (Craig Richmond - division) writes:

>One of the people here has a perl script that adjust expiry dates based on
>the amount of disk space free so that an optimal 80% or so is left free for
>the next day.  This of course fails accasionally, but mostly it works
>quite well.

Well, I've seen no Waffler speak up on this, so I will: in the case of wanting
to minimize space problems, Waffle's expiry wins hands down.  How?  Because it
is not based on time--it's based on number of articles in a newsgroup.  You can
set that number for each group to be anything.  For example, I expire junk
after 10 articles (not real good terminology...).  But, comp.sys.3b1 gets expired
after 10,000 articles (I want to keep it around for awhile).

How does Waffle do it?  Expire is part of rnews: as news is unbatched, articles are
expired on the fly: ie, if junk has 10 articles in it, and rnews unbatches an 
article for junk, then an article is deleted immediately after the new article is
added.

In my setup, with the newsspool on a separate spindle from the uucp spool,
things go very smoothly.  I can tune to my heart's content.  I have found that
my newsspool never changes by more than 1% from day-to day--excluding the groups
that effectively are not being expired (c.s.3b1, c.s.tandy).  No surprises--unless
someone posts a 5 or 6 MB binary to one of the groups I carry...  And I have 
85MB of leeway.

So, if you want to implement this under C-news, you could modify the system to
do this.


-- 

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant          | If there were a tax on syn,
GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC | we'd all be broke.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
My opinions are not those of GE and do not reflect GE policy in any way.
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: rog@Ingres.COM (Roger Taranto)
Subject: Are there NY/NJ weather newsgroups?
Organization: Ingres Corporation, a subsidiary of The ASK Group, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: 11 Dec 92 23:47:19 GMT

Are there any NY/NJ weather newsgroups?  If so, what are they called?

Thanks,
-Roger
rog@ingres.com
From: cathyf@is.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Non-compliant articles, week ending 6 December 92
Date: 11 Dec 92 22:30:44 GMT
Organization: Rice University

Oh, no, not again.

Didn't we have this flamewar already a year or so ago when C News
first started dropping non-compliant articles?  I'm sure we did
because it was the first time an individual poster (as opposed to a
thread) made it to my killfile.

Please, everyone who thinks dropping malformed articles is evil and
that users must be notified: nobody was convinced last time around,
and they won't be convinced this time around, by mere argument.
Produce working, efficient code for notification and then post.  Or
produce newsreader patches that make compliance easier or more likely.

Obviously even if you don't do these things you are still free to
disagree, and post about it, but based on what I saw last time we had
this flamewar, I think you are not likely to change anyone's mind.

	Cathy
	tired of flames and temporarily insane enough to think that
posts attempting to reduce flamage are not wholly futile
	also probably providing fine example of truth of own .sig
-- 
Cathy Foulston + Rice University + Network & Systems Support + cathyf@rice.edu
Why you should recycle bytes:  "Believe it or not, most deleted bytes currently
find their way straight into the Internet refuse stream, often to turn up in
postings to Usenet, or worse, OSI standards documents!"  -- Peter Deutsch
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: erodrigu@dcc.uchile.cl (Eduardo Rodriguez)
Subject: Re: New Newsgroup?
Originator: erodrigu@tolten
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 12:49:28 GMT
Organization: Universidad de Chile, Depto. de Ciencias de la Computacion


In article <jrennie.2qhr@terapin.com>, jrennie@terapin.com (Jimmy Rennie) writes:
> How exactly do you start a new newsgroup?  I have looked at all the available
> ones and it does not contain a newsgroup on a subject, so I would like to start
> one.

If local then ask your local News admin;
else read news.groups for some weeks at least.

edo...

       HOW ARE YOU?                         .                           .
 ////                        muerto  ```\  .     Eduardo Rodriguez     .
 c-OO  Le gustaria resucitar?        OO-c   .  erodrigu@dcc.uchile.cl   .
    \             no, gracias. Aqui  /     . Dpto Cs de la Computacion .
   -                  se esta mucho   -     .   Universidad de Chile    .
                     mejor que alla        .                           .
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,alt.config,alt.fan.john-palmer,biz.comp.services
From: jan@bagend.uucp (Jan Isley)
Subject: Re: newgroup comp.society.folklore
Organization: This space for rent.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:33:08 GMT

In article <8166@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>In article <rdippold.724562390@cancun> rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold) writes:
>>(Psst, I've set followups...)
>(Psst, I reset them slightly to groups I can post to)

Bogus sour grapes, Jay.  Do not recieve != cannot post, but you knew that.

newsgroups line reset.
-- 
Jan Isley   jan@bagend.uucp   gatech.edu!bagend!jan   (404)434-1335
From: chris@loki.amd.com (Chris Martin)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: feeding junk to ones neighbors
Date: 16 Dec 92 19:25:03 GMT
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Santa Clara, CA


Here is a philosophical question.  Assuming a site maintains an 
up-to-date active file, should junked articles be fed downstream?

On one hand, junk fed downstream will often end up junked.  Also, I could
see this making deleted groups live on forever as articles hop into and 
out of junk would continue to flow into bogus groups.

On the other hand, downstream sites may not consider the same groups
to be "junk".

Perhaps relaynews should notice active entries of the form
old.group =old.group.misc and rewrite the newsgroups header?

	--Chris
--

Chris Martin                                      chris.martin@amd.com
Advanced Micro Devices; Sunnyvale, Ca.; U.S.A.    408/987-9047
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: Jim Bowery's offensive posting
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 20:29:38 GMT

In article <w5_rmq#@dixie.com> jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>Carl's appointed himself world-wide guardian of politically correct free
>speech.  Best way to handle it is to simply put him in your kill file.

I thought free speech and "political correctness" were at odds with
each other?  Certainly the opponents of "political correctness" often
cite violation of their right to free speech as the reason for their
opposition.

I gather then that you are against both, "political correctness" and
free speech?  I believe that defines you as a fascist.

P.S.: Down with fascism... long live free speech.
      Political correctness isn't.

--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy,news.groups
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: Folklore, synth, and guidelines
Followup-To: news.admin.policy
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 09:06:24 GMT

> I've been wondering, if the current guidelines are so inadequate, how
> come almost 800 people, a large turnout for Usenet, have already voted
> on a proposal whose Subject line only mentions the unmoderation of a
> group that hardly anyone reads because it has hardly any traffic?
> Could it be that people in another, more popular group actually read
> the proposal when it went by?  ...

I realize these are rhetorical questions, but as the poster of the
proposal in question I'd like to point out that I also posted a
separate article as a pointer to it, with a Subject line that *did*
mention the group whose effective renaming was proposed.  So the
parallel with, uh, a certain earlier situation is imperfect at best.
[My original Subject line mentioned both groups, but the moderator of
news.announce.newsgroups changed it.  I hope he's learned his lesson. :-)]

Followups are directed to news.admin.policy.
-- 
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com
	"The conversation never became heated, which would have been difficult
	 in any argument where there is a built-in cooling-down period between
	 any remark and its answer."		-- Hal Clement, STAR LIGHT

This article is in the public domain.
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
From: cathyf@is.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston)
Subject: Re: Canceling other people's postings
Organization: Rice University
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 23:30:25 GMT

In article <ByuEHv.Hn7.2@cs.cmu.edu> Karl_Kleinpaste@cs.cmu.edu writes:
>[2] You run an anonymous contact service and one of its users asks you
>to cancel a posting.  (This has happened to me.)

I'd count that as the someone canceling his own post.  What's the
difference if the user's desire for cancellation is acted upon by
software or by another human? 

I do agree there are good reasons for cancelling other people's posts.

	Cathy
-- 
Cathy Foulston + Rice University + Network & Systems Support + cathyf@rice.edu
Why you should recycle bytes:  "Believe it or not, most deleted bytes currently
find their way straight into the Internet refuse stream, often to turn up in
postings to Usenet, or worse, OSI standards documents!"  -- Peter Deutsch
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy,soc.men,soc.motss,alt.censorship,alt.comp-acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Jim Bowery's offensive posting
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 14:31:20 GMT

system@netlink.cts.com (System Administrator) writes:

>NetLink is a public access system, and provides access for people to
>exchange ideas and opinions -- any opinions, not just those that are
>"politically correct." [...]  his posting access [has been]
>temporarily suspended.

jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:

>Carl's appointed himself world-wide guardian of politically correct free
>speech.  Best way to handle it is to simply put him in your kill file.
[...]

What is "politically correct free speech"? I was under the impression
that P.C. and free speech were opposites.

I am, however, happy to report that no appointment is needed to defend
freedom of expression.

- Carl


-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me.
 = kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: Jim Bowery's offensive posting
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 14:37:00 GMT

jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:

>Carl, the site in question is _not_ an academic site, and so academic
>freedom does not apply.

I am happy to report that the some of arguments for treating
unmoderated newsgroups as free speech forums, do not depend on
academic freedom.

>Further, your position in favor of completely unrestrictred free
>speech is not representative of anything outside the academic
>community, and is controversial even there.

I am happy to report that I do not favor for "completely unrestricted
free speech."

>Who appointed you guardian of academic freedom, anyway?

I am happy to report that one can defend academic freedom (and free
speech) without an appointement.

- Carl
-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me.
 = kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
Subject: Serdar Argic (was Re: Meanwhile, back at news.admin.policy)
Date: 16 Dec 1992 13:43:28 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: pit-manager.mit.edu

In article <visser.724483820@convex.convex.com>, visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:
|> 	He has managed to do a great deal of damage to soc.history
|> and soc.culture.europe as groups by his postings.  There is nothing
|> than can be done about it though.

If it's really as bad as you say it is (and, given what I've seen of his
postings, I have no reason to doubt you), then why hasn't the site from which
he posts shut off his posting access?

If the site from which he posts is sympathetic to his behavior (unfortunately,
there are propaganda sites that support such activities) , then why haven't
their feed sites cut them off?

He's clearly violating both the spirit and letter of the etiquette and posting
rules found in news.announce.newusers and (by and large) accepted by people. 
So why does he still have posting access?

-- 
Jonathan Kamens                                         jik@MIT.Edu
MIT Information Systems/Athena              Moderator, news.answers