HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: C news perf rel, mkstripinvis fails during doit.bin
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 04:41:03 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <Bx0HyC.92E@csc.liv.ac.uk> qq11@csc.liv.ac.uk (Alan Thew) writes:
>This expects the NEWSCTL/bin/config file to exist, this isn't installed
>until doit.news is run...

Known bug.  Easy fix:  mkstripinvis really doesn't need that file at all...
Just delete the reference.
-- 
MS-DOS is the OS/360 of the 1980s.      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
              -Hal W. Hardenbergh (1985)|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: news@uni-paderborn.de (News Uni-Paderborn)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: INN: "not-for-mail" in pathline...
Date: 11 Nov 92 11:13:35 GMT
Organization: Uni Paderborn FB 17 Informatik GERMANY
NNTP-Posting-Host: uni-paderborn.de

In config.data is PATHMASTER defined "not-for-mail" . What should i do, that
the pathline looks like "uni-paderborn.de!sender" and not
			"uni-paderborn.de!not-for-mail" ?
			 
Thanks in advance,

leini (leini@uni-paderborn.de)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin.misc
From: rac@sherpa.UUCP (Roger Cornelius)
Subject: sys file question
Organization: none
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:07:20 GMT
Followup-To: news.admin.misc


I posted this previously but got no response so I'm trying again.

Warning! This is probably a FAQ.

I receive the uunet.* newsgroups from uunet (except uunet.alternet).
The sys file (on uunet) for my site is:

sherpa:uunet,!uunet.alternet,to.sherpa/all:F

I received an article with the following headers today which shouldn't
have been sent according to the above sys file entry:

>Xref: sherpa misc.forsale:12577 rec.sport.football.pro:22343
>Organization: Masters student, Information Networking Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
>Path: sherpa!uunet!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!udel!rochester!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!dp3m+
>Newsgroups: misc.forsale,na.forsale,rec.sport.football.pro,rec.sport.football
>Message-ID: <keuz2XK00WBOE1919S@andrew.cmu.edu>
>Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 08:20:35 -0500 
>From: David Pascua <dp3m+@andrew.cmu.edu>
>Subject: JETS v. BILLS tix 4 sale
>Lines: 7

From my reading of the newssys(5) manual page, I suspect it was sent
because no Distribution: header was included and the na.forsale in
the Newsgroups: header matches the na distribution.

Is this correct, and if so is there a way around it?  If not correct,
what is the problem?

Thanks.
-- 
Roger Cornelius        sherpa!rac@uunet.uu.net       ...!uunet!sherpa!rac
From: rsalz@rodan.UU.NET (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: INN: "not-for-mail" in pathline...
Date: 11 Nov 1992 10:07:46 -0500
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

In <1dqpsvINNbv6@uni-paderborn.de> news@uni-paderborn.de (News Uni-Paderborn) writes:
>In config.data is PATHMASTER defined "not-for-mail" . What should i do, that
>the pathline looks like "uni-paderborn.de!sender" and not
>			"uni-paderborn.de!not-for-mail" ?
I am not sure that I understand the question.

If you want news posted by "rsalz" to have a path
	uni-paderborn.de!rsalz
the answer is that you will have to change frontends/inews.c sources
yourself.  Perhaps defining PATHMASTER as getenv("USER") would work, but
that's not secure -- you'll have to write code to do getpwuid, really.

There is no way to get it to work for nnrpd POST commands, so unless you
use nntp passwords (make inews setgid so only it can read the password
file) then you haven't guaranteed that the Path will always contain what
you want -- anyone on an authorized host can come in and post articles
without using inews.

Think again -- do you really need to do this?
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers,alt.bbs.unixbbs
From: bneale@access.digex.com (Brian Neale)
Subject: Re: Usenet news --> QWK archive
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, Maryland USA
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 17:32:07 GMT

steve@nyongwa.cam.org  (Steve Robbins) writes:
: 
: I was about to embark on a program to allow a dial-up user to save all
: the unread news in subscribed-to groups to a file, which one can then
: download and read offline.  This is fairly common in the BBS world, and
: since a standard format for the saved news exists (QWK), I thought I'd 
: use it.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

Sounds like a great idea!!  Keep us posted if you find anything like this
or decide to develop something
 --
***************************
Brian Neale
bneale@access.digex.com
***************************
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers,alt.bbs.unixbbs
From: guest@chopin.Physics.McGill.CA (Muhep Guest account)
Subject: Usenet news --> QWK archive
Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 01:53:07 GMT


I was about to embark on a program to allow a dial-up user to save all
the unread news in subscribed-to groups to a file, which one can then
download and read offline.  This is fairly common in the BBS world, and
since a standard format for the saved news exists (QWK), I thought I'd 
use it.

Since I don't have loads of time to reinvent wheels and such, I thought
I'd ask if someone has already done this before I go ahead.  If you have
software of this sort that you're willing to share (this will be running
under unix) please let me know.  It doesn't have to be QWK format,
although, ultimately, that's what I'm after.

REQUEST:  If you are going to post a reply to this, could you please mail
a copy to me at the address below?  If you are going to reply by mail,
could you again use this address?  Thank you.

Steve Robbins
steve@nyongwa.cam.org

Xref: sparky news.software.b:3329 comp.unix.programmer:5186 alt.folklore.computers:15888
From: chet@odin.ins.cwru.edu (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.unix.programmer,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: inews in C - shell/awk scripts are unreliable!
Date: 6 Nov 1992 15:32:02 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: odin.ins.cwru.edu

In article <id.Q3QU.XN4@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:

>Making "#!" a magic number for exec came much later.

This feature was introduced with 4.1 BSD.  It was inspired by a
suggestion from Dennis Ritchie.

Chet
-- 
``The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.''
	-- Arthur Schlesinger

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University	Internet: chet@po.CWRU.Edu
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills)
Subject: Cnews lines slightly broken (mine too)
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 05:17:02 GMT

A few days ago, I posted a fix to Cnews inject/lines.  The original
would delete the first line of the article body, if the article was
lacking an empty line after the headers.  My version fixed that, but
deleted empty lines later in the body.  This one works:

*** Olines	Sat Sep 14 10:14:27 1991
--- lines	Sat Nov  7 23:02:16 1992
***************
*** 2,12 ****
  
  # generate Lines: header
  lines="`
! (sed 1d $inbody;		# take out the first (blank) line
   if test -r $HOME/.signature; then
  	echo '-- '
  	sed 4q $HOME/.signature
   fi) | wc -l `"
  echo Lines: $lines
  
! cat $inbody			# emit the article body
--- 2,13 ----
  
  # generate Lines: header
  lines="`
! (sed -e '/^$/!n' -e 1d $inbody;		# take out the first (blank) line
   if test -r $HOME/.signature; then
  	echo '-- '
  	sed 4q $HOME/.signature
   fi) | wc -l `"
  echo Lines: $lines
+ echo ""
  
! sed -e '/^$/!n' -e 1d $inbody	# emit the article body

-- 
-Gary Mills-         -Networking Group-          -U of M Computer Services-
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills)
Subject: Two-hop UUCP feed with C-news
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 17:38:45 GMT

My news server is on a machine that has only TCP connections, which is
fine for the NNTP feeds.  Another machine has serial ports for UUCP.
I have set up an UUCP link over TCP between the two, assuming that I
would only need to change the viauux script so it did 
``exec uux - -r -gd uucp_host!$1!rnews'' instead of just
``exec uux - -r -gd $1!rnews'', but I soon discovered that uux
only allows one hop.  I will figure out another way to do this,
but maybe somebody has already done it?  If so, please let me know.
I don't want to run news on the UUCP machine.

-- 
-Gary Mills-         -Networking Group-          -U of M Computer Services-
From: zeke@fasttech.com (Bohdan Tashchuk)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: inews in C - shell/awk scripts are unreliable!
Date: 7 Nov 92 20:26:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: fasttech.1992Nov7.202621.17097
Organization: Fast Technology

In <3950@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:

>But ":" still works everywhere to invoke
>/bin/sh.  Which is all you need, except for the unfortunate situations
>when /bin/sh isn't what you really want (as in Ultrix where sh5
>is what you usually want).

This isn't quite true, as I've learned the hard way.

If you are running ksh (at least the old version I have) then ksh will
execute the script, rather than handing it off to sh.

If ksh was truly compatible with sh, then this wouldn't matter. But it's not.
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Cnews fast stdio on SunOS 4.1.3???
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 06:14:13 GMT

The real truth is that our stdio code is not compatible with the SunOS
4.1.x stdio.  The combination *may* work for you, but I don't recommend
it.
-- 
Geoff Collyer				world!geoff, world.std.com!geoff
From: kean@flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Kean Stump)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: INN v1.2 and master/slave posting
Date: 12 Nov 92 10:09:03 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Oregon State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: flop.engr.orst.edu

I'm on a 4/75, sunos 4.1.1, 32 Mb ram.

For some gawdawful historical reason, I have two hosts
sharing the same news spool.  One is a master, one's a slave.
The slave can't run innd because it's using the same spool area as the master
and two innd's arguing over the same news system will probably cause
difficulties.  So, I shuffled nnrpd a bit and now any connection to the nntp
port on the slave invokes nnrpd with the -m master-host option, to forward all
posts to the master for processsing (nnrpd wants a -m instead of a -S like the
man page sez).

Unfortunately, this doesn't work.  nnrpd complains with this error:

Nov 12 17:54:30 talon nnrpd[7754]: cerridwen.ucs.orst.edu post failed Can't
send connect request to server, Error 0

Here's how in.nnrpd is invoked in inetd.conf:

nntp stream tcp nowait root /inn/etc/in.nnrpd in.nnrpd -m news.orst.edu 

All the obvious stuff works, proper responses to gethostbyname() calls on
news.orst.edu etc.  From what our sniffer shows, the connect request never
makes it onto the wire.

I'm puzzled, and this is a rather timely problem to solve.  If you would email
any hints or suggestions to kean@ucs.orst.edu, I'll summarize the responses to
news.software.b.

Thanks,

kean
-- 
Kean Stump - kean@ucs.orst.edu                            (503)-737-4740 
Oregon State University, Network Operations               Cthulu Saves, In Case 
OSU doesn't pay me enough to have official opinions.      It's Hungry Later
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: INN and multihomed NNTP clients
Date: 11 Nov 1992 00:53:25 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com

In article <1dp952INN2ci@milk.Warren.MENTORG.COM> tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli) writes:
>In article <1dou8tINN6p1@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>
>>The name in the hosts NIS map for the two interfaces are godot.think.com
>>and godot-1.think.com, so I think they should both match this criterion.
>
>Shouldn't reverse lookups for a multihomed host both return
>godot.think.com?  (I'm threading on thin ice here, I'm not expert on
>DNS technicalities)

As I said, we're using NIS, not DNS (although we have our NIS servers set
up to default to DNS for non-local hosts).

Actually, when I do "ypmatch <either address> hosts.byaddr" it gives the
result "godot.think.com".  

>Anyway, I do something like godot*.think.com here and it seems to
>work.  Why not upgrade to INN1.2?

Actually, I meant to write INN 1.X, since I wasn't sure precisely what
version we're running (I only knew that we finally upgraded from the beta
version about a month ago).  It turns out it's 1.2.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: ianm@icsbelf.co.uk (Ian Moran)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: fake file in C-news
Keywords: fake, c-news
Date: 6 Nov 92 09:13:48 GMT
Organization: ICS Computing Group Ltd., Belfast
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Hello

Well the title says it all. What purpose does this file serve (located
in the news spool directory) and what is it telling me ?

Ta.

 Ian

--

Ian Moran                     Internet:  ianm@icsbelf.co.uk
ICS Computing Group Ltd.      UUCP:      ...{uknet,uunet,mcsun}!icsbelf!ianm
Belfast, N. Ireland.          Fidonet:   2:252/309.6
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods)
Subject: Re: inews in C - shell/awk scripts are unreliable!
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc.
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 09:59:52 GMT

In article <3950@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
> Even worse, AT&T and Xenix frequently botched it.  So the result

I've yet to find a native AT&T UNIX, or XENIX, that implements #!
interpreter file support.  They can't botch something they don't do!

> But ":" still works everywhere to invoke
> /bin/sh.  Which is all you need, except for the unfortunate situations
> when /bin/sh isn't what you really want (as in Ultrix where sh5
> is what you usually want).

No, ":" doesn't work anywhere near everywhere, particularly on many
older XENIX-286 sites, and indeed on some csh's derived from the port
AT&T did to UNIX System V.  I've had more trouble with scripts that
assume a ":" or blank line will suffice than I care to remember.
Luckily I no longer use any systems exhibiting these problems.

> While leading your script with an unadorned ":" will in very rare
> situations result in the wrong shell, more complicated sexy schemes
> (like your shell header) are known to fail in a number of common
> environments.  Like some Xenix csh getting && and || backwards.
> So, if you want /bin/sh, it's best to use a simple ":", and fix
> it with #! in the rare occasions it doesn't work.

Very rare indeed!  I.e. only those places where /bin/sh is the wrong
shell.  But since my scripts generally are /bin/sh friendly (i.e. they
work with V7 shells), that usually isn't possible!

There's nothing very complicated, or sexy, about the scheme I use.  In
fact it's a simple adaptation of the scheme many perl scripts use to
do something similar.  I must say I'm extremely happy to have found a
solution to this problem that works in so many situations!

I admit I've not tested the ": || exec /bin/sh $0 $argv:q" line on any
more than the most recent XENIX, ISC 1.0.6, and AIX v3.2, I've not
heard anyone complain about it failing either...

The primary goal of introducing the first two lines I always use is to
provide the lowest common, but most efficient, solution to the problem
of getting the right shell to run my script.  A third (commented out)
line exists for those systems on which I've found ksh to be either
broken (many ports of the 1985 version(s)), or incompatible with some
V7 feature being used.  Naturally a local edit of the script will be
required in such cases.

In such rare cases where either the above edit is required to avoid
ksh, or where /bin/sh is not the correct path to the desired shell,
it's a simple matter to fix a Makefile that normally uses "cp" to
create script targets to instead use "sed" or something similar.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@robohack.UUCP, woods@Elegant.COM  VE3TCP	UniForum Canada & ECI
+1 416 443-1734 [home] +1 416 362-9772 [work]	Toronto, Ontario; CANADA
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: montjoy@thor.ece.uc.edu (Robert Montjoy)
Subject: Re: fake file in C-news
Keywords: fake, c-news
Organization: Unversity of Cincinnati, ECE Dept
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 23:44:36 GMT

Hi..

Here is the list of known problems for C-News


This one-line change to relay/control.c will avoid creating $NEWSARTS/fake:
113c113
< 	art->a_status |= synccaches();
---
> 	art->a_status |= actsync();


Failure of the exploder regression test is a known problem (some tars
don't make empty directories).  The fix should be as follows:

#! /bin/sh
cd explode/regress
mkdir master/out.going master/out.going/bar master/out.going/baz 2>/dev/null
mkdir master/out.going/foo out/out.going out/out.going/bar 2>/dev/null
mkdir out/out.going/baz out/out.going/foo 2>/dev/null
>>master/out.going/bar/togo
>>master/out.going/baz/togo
>>master/out.going/foo/togo
>>out/out.going/bar/togo
>>out/out.going/baz/togo
>>out/out.going/foo/togo


Empty Expires: headers (such as produced by Pnews) are not just quietly
deleted by inews.  The fix is to misc/canonhdr.c:

122c122,123
< 		    STREQN(nhdr, expiresnm, STRLEN(expiresnm))) {
---
> 		    STREQN(nhdr, expiresnm, STRLEN(expiresnm)) &&
> 		    nonnull(nhdr+STRLEN(expiresnm))) {
139a141,149
> }
> 
> int
> nonnull(s)
> char *s;
> {
> 	register char *nwp = skipsp(s);
> 
> 	return *nwp != '\n' && *nwp != '\0';


Sites with the SysV tr need to execute this before building C News:

rm inject/stripinvis


The UCB passwd file GCOS field "&" hack in inject/fullname.c contains a
bug; here's the fix:

50c50
< 		(void) strcat(newgcos, cap);
---
> 		(void) strcpy(newgcos + (delim - gcos), cap);


inject/pnews refers to a command named "ersh", which we didn't ship.
Change "ersh" to "rsh" for now.


relay/ctl/alternate is obsolete and interferes with installation; the fix is

rm -rf relay/ctl/alternate


The clever dicks on the POSIX committees gratuitously changed the return
types of a bunch of "standard" functions, in the grand ANSI C tradition
("preserve existing correct code"?  just say no).  A particularly
annoying one is that umask now returns a mode_t, not an int.  If you
can't compile C News because your system has been posixiated, the quick
fix is:

(echo 'g/umask/d'; echo w) | ed h/libc.h


inject/actflag quits early if it encounters a group that is not known
locally.  This diff to inject/actflag.c fixes it:

77,79c77
< 		if (actent == NULL)		/* group not known locally? */
< 			continue;		/* keep trying */
< 
---
> 		if (actent != NULL) {		/* group known locally? */
113c111
< 
---
> 		}


Don't use our faster stdio on SunOS 4.1 and later releases.  stdiock has
been updated to catch this latest incompatibility.



-- 
Rob Montjoy                   		- Rob.Montjoy@UC.Edu
Computer Engineer    	      		- montjoy@ucbeh.BITNET
University of Cincinnati      		- montjoy@babbage.ece.uc.edu
Electrical and Computer Engineering	- uunet!uceng!rmontjoy

--  To Save the Earth. The Humans must die.

Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: bill@netagw.com (Bill Aten)
Subject: Re: inews in C - shell/awk scripts are unreliable!
Organization: Computerizers, Alamogordo, NM
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1992 16:03:11 GMT

In article <BxCJCw.AuE@NeoSoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <3950@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
>> So, if you want /bin/sh, it's best to use a simple ":", and fix
>> it with #! in the rare occasions it doesn't work.
>
>And since portable code demands the use of /bin/sh (csh being a lousy
>programming language) this should be all the time.
>
>(one who is getting really tired of patching the shell scripts in C News...
> this insistence on using #! is the only really annoying problem in it)

It's a pain, but only a minor one.  The following "sh" script will convert
all files in current and sub-directories that begin with "#!/bin/sh" to
": #!/bin/sh".  It takes only a short time to check each and every file and
modifies every one that needs it.  Works for me anyway...

--------------- Start of Script ------------------
: #! /bin/sh
#
# This file modifies the CNEWS scripts so that they will run as Bourne
# Shell scripts.  Xenix doesn't understand what "#! /bin/sh" means.
#
# Run this script AFTER running 'build' so the "doit.*" scripts are
# properly fixed too.
#
# Make a record of all modified files for info purposes only
touch ./Modified.files
#
for f in `find . -type f -print`
do
   if test "`sed 1q $f`" = "#! /bin/sh"; then
      echo $f >> ./Modified.files
      ed $f <<'!'
1s/#!/: #!/
w
!
   fi
done

/usr/local/gnu/chown -R bin.bin *
--------------- End of Script ------------------

Note:  the last "chown" line simply ensures the proper ownership of all
       files prior to installation.

Hope this is of some help to somebody.  Cheers...
-- 
Bill Aten                        bill@netagw.com  (or)  ...!uunet!netagw!bill
=============================================================================
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
-- Bernard Berenson
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: swanger@ducvax.auburn.edu
Subject: xhdr problem
Organization: Auburn University, AL
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 21:50:49 GMT

We have Cnews, NNTP 1.5.11, on a SUN ELC (SLC??).  It seems to work ok with
a variety of news readers.  I have a problem with the XHDR command.

There is a group named alt that contains one message.  When I telnet to the
news server, open this group and enter an xhdr subject command, it prints 
the subject twice!  This causes some software to get confused.  Here is a
log of a telnet session.  Does anyone know why the xhdr command works like
this in this situation.  The return code says there are two messages, but
there is really only one, so I thought the subject would only be printed
once.

Any ideas?  I would appreciate any help you can send!

Thanks

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

% telnet news 119
Trying 131.204.2.16 ...
Connected to news.duc.auburn.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 news NNTP[auth] server version 1.5.11 (10 February 1991) ready at Fri
Nov  6 15:43:57 1992 (posting ok).
group alt
211 2 3 3 alt
xhdr subject
221 subject fields follow
3 Re: Request for Stories: ROBO-COPULATION
3 Re: Request for Stories: ROBO-COPULATION
.

-- 
David Swanger,   Auburn University, Alabama,   swanger@accs.duc.auburn.edu 
Xref: sparky news.software.b:3339 comp.unix.programmer:5200 alt.folklore.computers:15922