HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: What does '#' appended to file name mean in ls from ftp?
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 23:54:17 GMT

[this really has nothing to do with administrating news, hence followups]
 Allen> == Allen M. Cohen <amc@wlv.imsd.contel.com> 

 Allen> When I open a ftp connection, and do "ls" some files have '#' appended
 Allen> to their name.
 Allen> Does this mean there's a patch or what?

This *probably* means that you have turned on "hash" printing per 1K in
your ftp client.  Most ftp clients are too stupid to realize that
printing hash marks in the middle of the delivery of an 'ls' listing is
kind of a silly idea.

Try turning "hash" printing off (by typing "hash" at the ftp prompt; it
should tell you which way it's being toggled), and repeat the "ls"
command.  If the hashes go away, you found the problem.  If they don't,
all that means is that some wiseguy named his files with hash marks
(possibly GNU Emacs backup files or something), not that there are (or
aren't) patches to that program.

--Chris
--
Christopher Davis <ckd@eff.org> |    ECONOMIC OBSERVATIONS DEPARTMENT
System Manager & Postmaster     |  "There's always something going out of
Electronic Frontier Foundation  |      business in Central Square."
+1 617 864 0665  NIC: [CKD1]    |   -Rita Marie Rouvalis <rita@eff.org>
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Signatures (was Re: What a sendsys bomb actually is...)
Date: 15 Apr 92 11:24:24 GMT
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

In <1992Apr14.142544.12419@cis.uab.edu> sloan@cis.uab.edu (Kenneth Sloan)
writes:
> In article <1992Apr14.095554.29192@bristol.ac.uk> P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
> >The weakness here is that the email headers are not only the envelope,
> >they are also the 'signature'.
[...]
> This is the crux of the matter.  I do not believe that any piece of
> e-mail (or USElessNET article) that I have ever seen contains a
> "signature".

Quite.  How long are we going to have to wait before we get proper signatures
in a standard format for Usenet articles?

In the mean time, I'm happy to provide you with your first example of a
Usenet article with a "signature" of the body text, up to but not including
the "-- ".  Of course, it won't do you any good unless you have PGP and a
copy of my public key...


mathew
-- 
begin 666 body.ctx
MB4H Y665):YC3<3] 4HRR]M@V"^-&$!#,Z9KDIJ7*W$BA)=Y1E'XG%UR50SZ
@N]377HQMI+B"=NUU##3<T*3M<6A<:?,?,3P,]6>-R1$B
 
end
From: bjones@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Sifting thru old news
Date: 6 Apr 1992 19:53:36 GMT
Organization: U.C.S.D. Department of Communication
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

In article <1992Apr4.030956.4996@iWarp.intel.com> merlyn@iWarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:
>
>IMMINENT DEATH OF USENET PREDICTED.
>
>[again. :-]
>
>(Who has that post that codified this phrase, with the history of
>Usenet from day 2 onward, including the uses of this phrase?  

I "probably" have this article/post.  Several months ago I received
12 full magtapes of news from 1982 to 1986 or so from the good folks
at CFRI/Toronto and have been busily and happily rooting around in
the files ever since.  The problems of sorting thru all this news
however are more daunting than I imagined.  There's 2gb of news
there and I have about 160mb of diskspace to use to sort it.  This
is enough space to make a dd tape dump and run tar against it to
extract the files a few at a time (there's not enough inodes on this
machine to dump an old news tape with tar).  

What I need is some kind of search engine/"knowbot" that I could
prime with a few, well-chosen words/strings that would run with
tar as the primary extraction utility and find the appropriate
articles.  (Does this make any sense? I'm not too sure of my terms
here.)  Given that my programming experience is limited to writing
shell scripts, I'd appreciate some advice/help from those of you
out there who know a bit about awk and C.  Anyone have any advice
or programs that I could use or modify to find articles about
specific things?  If so, and I can locate the articles in the
database, I'd be happy to repost them somewhere where others can
see/retrieve them.

Anyone out there care to see the first use of the smiley face or the 
article, mentioned above, where the phrase "iminent death of the net 
predicted"  was first used?

Bruce Jones 			Graduate Program in Communication
bjones@ucsd.edu/bitnet		University of California, San Diego
(619) 534-0417/4410		9500 Gilman Drive
FAX (619) 534-7315		La Jolla, Ca. 92093-0503

 -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=-
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Sendsys police
Date: 7 Apr 92 23:09:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: mp.1992Apr7.230922.918
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <1992Apr7.194830.19599@Princeton.EDU> vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes:
>...
>Set up a robot mailer on uunet.
>
>Have backbone sites* running code that automatically cancels sendsys messages
>if they are not in a temp. acceptable file.  Entries to this file are made
>by mail from UUNET.  Sendsys messages not in the file are cancelled and the
>message sent to the robot on uunet.  Have the file listing sites accepting
>sendsys messages cleaned of addresses more than, say, 14 days old.
>...

>The only problems I see are:
>...

 Add one more problem:

	Legitimate 'sendsys' is sent.  All the authentication goes on.
	UUNET notifies all "sendsys police".  Sender sends out a new
	'sendsys'

	Unfortunately backbones site B has been down for several days, due
	to a hardware problem.  Its authentication message is still sitting
	in the queue on uunet.  It sees the legitimate 'sendsys' and the
	cancel daemon goes to work.  Before long the message has been
	cancelled across most of USENET.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Sendsys police
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:54:06 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <1992Apr8.145433.9988@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>In article <1992Apr7.230922.918@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr7.194830.19599@Princeton.EDU> vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes:
>>>...
>>>Set up a robot mailer on uunet.
>>>...
>> Add one more problem:
>[...]
>>	Unfortunately backbones site B has been down for several days, due
>>	to a hardware problem.  Its authentication message is still sitting
>>...
>>
>    How about...
>
>       sys_police would need to be started by hand. If you are going to run
>...
>    It is important for the program not to run wild. Inattentive sysadmin's
>shouldn't run it. If it needs to be restarted by hand, then sysadmin's who

  You now have a system which requires human interaction, and such that an
error by any of the human participants destroys the functionality of
'sendsys'.  Such arrangements are inherently fragile and do not lend themselves
to the current USENET.

>loose interest will just fade away. The good part is that there wouldn't need
>to be many sites running sys_police.

 Wrong.  There WOULD need to be many sites running sendsys police.  With only
a few sites, any 'sendsys' forger would merely list those sites in the initial
"Path:" thereby ensuring that they never see the article.  You either need
enough sites that it is inconceivable that a forger would correctly discover
and enter all in "Path:", or you need enough sites that avoiding them would
seriously disrupt article propogation.  With the continued spread of nntp it is
becoming very hard to seriously disrupt propogation.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940
From: pe@dasc.nl (Peter J. Ebbelink)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Automatic disclaimers on outbound postings from a corporation
Date: 17 Apr 92 07:30:17 GMT
Organization: Data Sciences B.V.

In <1992Apr16.032526.17951@rootgroup.com> davehieb@magi.rootgroup.com (David Hieb) writes:

>i'm looking for the best way to automatically incorporate a corporate
>disclaimer into all news articles that are posted from within an
>organization. i've seen the following disclaimer from CONVEX and
>really like the header concept.

>====================================================================
>X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
>              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
>              not necessarily those of CONVEX.
>====================================================================

>can anyone recommend a good procedure?

I include a standard company wide disclaimer in "inews": This way nobody
can avoid it. I suggest you make the disclaimer short and snappy: As
other posters wrote: All of usenet knows it, it just to cover your
bud :-) I think ours will cover it all.
Next follows the inews code segment.
Hope it helps!

--------( inews fragment; disclaimer code around line 198 )--------
 # strip invisible chars from body, a la B news.  bells and escapes are right ou
t.
 case "$trversion" in
 v7)    tr -d  '\1-\7\13\15-\37' ;;
 v6)    tr -d '[\1-\7]\13[\15-\37]' ;;
 esac <$inbody

###### Company wide disclaimer ######
 if test -r $NEWSCTL/Signature; then
    sed 4q $NEWSCTL/Signature       # A word from our sponsor
 fi) >$censart
###### End Company wide disclaimer ######

# to post or to mail? that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind

--------( end inews fragment )--------


Cheers,

Peter
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      pe@dasc.nl (Peter J. Ebbelink)
   Data Sciences BV, P.O.Box 22669, 1100 DD Amsterdam, Voice: 31 20-6520652
         System Manager IVS & ACS2, Network manager IVS & ACS2,
            Infrastructure manager IVS/ACS2, UNIX consultant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#include <stddisclaimer.h>       This might not be the view of my employer.
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: I've forged a cancel of a sendsys
Date: 7 Apr 92 18:46:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: yang.1992Apr7.134642.16798
 <fLg9WML@quack.sac.ca.us> <1992Apr1.221318.29293@mp.cs.niu.edu> <fLnpwIM@quack.sac.ca.us>
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

In article <fLnpwIM@quack.sac.ca.us>, mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) writes:
> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> 
>>  For a UUCP host, however, the mail will all arrive, be bounced and sent
>>back.  The bounces will double the load.  I guess they could alias their
>>'sendsys' address to /dev/null to avoid the cost of bouncing.  But they
>>will still take a big hit in increased traffic.
> 
> This is true, and the only suggestion I have in response is that
> mail feed sites could choose to refuse to pass mail to sendsys@site.uucp.
> At least now that mail traffic could be classified - it would have
> something to set it apart from other mail traffic. Classifying it
> is the first step to being able to junk it.
> 
	1: Can't the sendsys/etc. messages already be detected by:
		A. They're control-type messages
		B. They've got a title of the appropriate kind
	2: What if a uucp site WANTS a sendsys performed? Admittedly 
somewhat unlikely, but the possibility is there. Perhaps a solution would 
be for the uucp site to post something to news.admin to tell people that 
the sendsys is valid, and the reasons why. If the reasons seem odd, mail 
the person and hold the sendsys message in the meantime.
	-Allen
Xref: sparky news.admin:3431 comp.os.minix:2881
From: larry@news.rn.com (Larry Snyder)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: 1st (?) senduuname bomb, and a fast fix
Date: 8 Apr 92 12:56:49 GMT
Organization: Feeds-R-Us

jpp@NCoast.ORG (John Palmer) writes:

>Our news system does not reply to sendsys. It sends a messaage to "usenet"

ours doesn't either -- but we need to stop the forwarding of sendsys requests
to machines downline and/or upline --

-- 
 =*= Larry Snyder, Public Access Unix Site - 219-289-0777 - 10 lines =*=
      internet: larry@gator.rn.com        uucp: uunet!trauma!larry
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.config
From: jim@rwsys.lonestar.org (James T. Wyatt)
Subject: Re: history file size
Organization: R/W Systems, Richland Hills, Texas, USA, 76118-5849
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 03:59:41 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.133057.7897@r-node.gts.org> marc@r-node.gts.org (Marc Fournier - System Admin) writes:
>	Is there a way to increase the allowable size of my
>history file?  It seems to tell me it is too full at 4115blocks
>on my machine, and then stop processing news.

Is there a user quota or partition quota being applied to the news user
account? (Wonder if /usr/spool/news/articles counts...) Ours is almost
never less than 7900 bks.


-- 
James Wyatt  KA5VJL  jim@rwsys.lonestar.org  Semper Gumbi - always flexible!
From: bruce@Data-IO.COM (Bruce Reynolds)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Is there a way to deliver a sendsys to only one site?
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:41:53 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Data I/O Corporation


I would like to deliver a sendsys to *one* individual site at a time,
not a distribution.  This site might be directly connected to me, but
might be several news/mail hops away.  It might even be in a different
distribution.

Is there a way to do this?  

Mail your answers to bruce@data-io.com (uunet!pilchuck!bruce).
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,talk.bizarre,alt.usage.english
From: jaapjl@tab00.larc.nasa.gov (J Lee Jaap)
Subject: Re: Apostrophe usage
Followup-To: talk.bizarre,alt.usage.english
Organization: AS&M Inc
	<1338@wshb.csms.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 15:30:20 GMT

In article <1338@wshb.csms.com> michaelb@wshb.csms.com ( WSHB Operations Eng) writes:
[Multiple attributions lost....]
   >> =o= Its not "it's" that's misspelled so losely (it's misspelling
   >> is "its"), its "its" who's spelling looses so much (it's
   >> misspelling is "it's").  Also, you should punish those whose
   >> usage of "whose" and "who's" loose.
   >>     <_Jym_>
   >
   >Ha! Wrong! You used "it's" when you meant "its"!

   And the last sentance from Jym has no verb! He means "you should punish
   those whose usage of "whose" and "who's" *IS* loose."

No, his only misspelling in the last sentence is "whose"; he meant to
write "who's", because he really meant "whose".  And because he really
meant "lose", he intentionally wrote "loose" (save that it should have
been "looses" (so it truly is two misspellings)).  :-) :-) :-)

   It's vs. its
[...]
   Who's vs. whose
[...]
You're vs. your, they're vs. their [vs. there]

The easiest way I know to `explain' these is to say:
	You've got to _memorize_ the forms of the pronouns, as in
	any other language (that has them), if you want to use them
	correctly.  (Generally, though, contractions take apostrophes;
	possessives don't.)
After all, the possessive of "(s)he" is not "(s)he's", but I don't see
very many mistakes for this one.

And `there' is an altogether different word.  Please pay attention to
what you write, if you expect others to pay attention.  0.3 * :-)

[*note followup*]
--
J Lee Jaap <jaapjl@tab00.larc.nasa.gov> {+1 804/864, or FTS 928}-2148
employed by, not speaking for, AS&M Inc, at NASA LaRC, Hampton VA 23665-5225
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Subject: knight@rlf.org
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 19:03:09 GMT


In article <1992Apr7.194033.22452@cattnts> craig@cattnts (Craig Campbell) writes:
>With resect to tracking fake postings on the net,
>with co-operation from various sysadmins, you should (in theory) be
>able to back track an article to the source machine by the time stamps
>and communications logs for that article's file. Whoever's system has the
>oldest version of the file in question, should be the original.

I am trying to do this; I suspect others are, as well.  Not all system
administrators keep the same level of logs; not all of them are as helpful
as one would hope (frankly, a lot of them, I'm sure, don't feel it's really
worth the effort and time to help track it down).

Here are four of his messages; one of the sysadmins at wupost was kind
enough to send me the headers from the messages, even though they didn't
have the logs around.  I've got the Message-ID's below, followed by wupost's
version, and then mine.

	Message-ID: <v3rT4z8jb@rlf.org>
Path: wupost!unlinfo.unl.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!
		zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!
		tulane!ukma!rutgers!mips!wupost!earth.net!emory!rlf.org!
		knight
Path: kithrup!stanford.edu!rutgers!mips!wupost!earth.net!emory!
		rlf.org!knight

The path is the same, up until rutgers.  (You work backwards.)  Since wupost
is on it twice, the second wupost is, almost certainly, forged.  I suspect
the mips portion is forged, as well, for other reasons.

	Message-ID: <q5wE1r3jb@rlf.org>
Path: wupost!unlinfo.unl.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!
		zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!
		emory!wupost!mips!rlf.org!knight
Path: kithrup!stanford.edu!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!gatech!
		rutgers!emory!wupost!mips!rlf.org!knight

Here, again, they are the same, up to rutgers.  Once again, since wupost is
there twice, I am pretty sure that part of it is a forgery.

	Message-ID: <z1rF9b7jb@rlf.org>
Path: wupost!unlinfo.unl.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!
		zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!swrinde!gatech!
		psuvax1!rutgers!ispd-newsserver!psinntp!emory!
		nntp.msstate.edu!wupost!mips!rlf.org!knight
Path: kithrup!stanford.edu!rutgers!ispd-newsserver!psinntp!emory!
		nntp.msstate.edu!wupost!mips!rlf.org!knight

Amazing.  Once again, they are the same path up to rutgers, then it goes out
to two different machines.  Note that, this time, rlf.org talked directly to
mips.  Since I've also spoken, a bit, with the MIPS people, and they got the
messages from someplace else, I do not believe MIPS is the original site.


	Message-ID: <jb4g2hrn1@rlf.org>
Path: wupost!unlinfo.unl.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!
		zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!rutgers!psinntp!mips!
		wupost!nntp.msstate.edu!rlf.org!knight
Path: kithrup!stanford.edu!agate!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!
		usc!rutgers!psinntp!mips!wupost!nntp.msstate.edu!rlf.org!
		knight

Will wonders never cease.  A difference!  This time, the path is the same,
up to usc!

My guess would be that the articles are originating at rutgers, or are being
injected there.

Geoff Collyer points out that even the rutgers could be a forgery.  That's
true.  I sent a note to postmaster@rutgers.edu asking for some help, but
they never replied.  Either they're very overworked, or they don't care that
someone is abusing the net from their site (my guess, to be frank, is the
former; a postmaster's job is not an easy one).  In any event, I can't tell
what the article looked like at rutgers, so I can't say much.

So, unfortunately, I cannot say what site is the origin for the weenie.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one
sef@kithrup.COM  |  form to bring them all and in the darkness rewrite the
-----------------+  hell out of them" -- sendmail ruleset 3 comment from DEC.
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
From: pacolley@ember.UUCP (Paul Colley)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Sendsys police
Date: 9 Apr 92 14:05:48 GMT
Reply-To: pacolley@ember.UUCP (Paul Colley)
Organization: Ember---private system

In article <1992Apr8.165406.26227@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu
(Neil Rickert) writes:

>In article <1992Apr8.145433.9988@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu>
>dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>
>>                                    The good part is that there wouldn't need
>>to be many sites running sys_police.
>
> Wrong.  There WOULD need to be many sites running sendsys police.  With only
>a few sites, any 'sendsys' forger would merely list those sites in the initial
>"Path:" thereby ensuring that they never see the article.

Ah... wrong.  The police sites can easily arrange to see all
articles, regardless of the path they are injected with.  And it
doesn't require any changes to the news software.

It's easy to configure your site so that you send aritcles to your
neighbour, even if your neighbour is already listed on the path
line.  For instance, with UUCP, batch articles under some fake name
"iuadfb3Q" and then have the batch command actually send those
batched articles to "sendsys.police.net".

For a forger to block this, he'd have to guess the label "iuadfb3Q",
which never appears in any news articles, even those forwarded to
sendsys.police.net.

Note that all this causes is some (potentially) redundant traffic,
since true duplicates are detected by message-id.  And this traffic
can be made negligible if only "sendsys" messages are fed over the
redundant link (but that requires changes to the news software).

Anyways, all it takes is for the sendsys police to make sure they
have one or more feed sites that send them all articles, even if
the police site is already on the path.

"What if the perpetrator guesses the police's feed sites too?"
Well, I think this is getting silly.  More to the point, this can
be made impossible, since an NNTP site can easily have news fed to
it by any one of zillions of other machines on the Internet.

So we don't need many police sites, we just need police sites that
have a cooperative feed, and that's easy.

----

Incidently, this response was inspired by an accident several weeks
ago, where I fed all articles received here back to my feed site.
And it wasn't with batching, either...

- Paul Colley
University:  colley@qucis.queensu.ca
Home:        pacolley@ember.uucp   watmath!ember!pacolley  +1 613 545 3807
"Quantum Mechanics:  The dreams stuff is made of"    - Ken Burnside