HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Iain.Lea%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net (Iain Lea)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
Subject: Re: common newsreader database implementation available
Date: 5 Nov 92 08:20:44 GMT
Reply-To: Iain.Lea%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net
Organization: TIN Support
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 Beta PL7]

Geoff Collyer (geoff@world.std.com) wrote:
:
: The common newsreader database supported by C News is now available by
: anonymous ftp from world.std.com:src/news/nov.dist.tar.Z.

Due to the generosity of a net friend (Hi John) I was able to receive a 
copy of this package via Email. If this is going to be accepted as a 
standard it should be distributed as widely as possible (ie. posted to
a source newsgroup as well as been put up for ftp access).

Anyway I have looked it over and find that its an Ok package except for:

1. The .overview index files are stored in each groups spooldir which 
   means if you are running SysV and are taking a fullish feed you lose
   ~2000 inodes from your newspools 64K of inodes. 
   The solution would be to make it configurable to store the .overview
   files on another filesystem.

2. The docs mention that to use the .overview files over a network one 
   has to NFS mount the news spool to each machine that has readers
   that can understand .overview index files. 
   This is only a partial solution. A full solution would also be able
   to offer the index file via NNTP to any reader that requests it.
   I have modified my NNTP XINDEX extension so that .overview index
   files can be returned as well as tin style index files. This will
   allow NNTP only sites to benefit from the common database format.
   I will be issuing the XINDEX patch with the next release of the 
   tin newsreader within the next few weeks.

Iain

--
NAMES  Iain Lea    Iain.Lea%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net
SNAIL  Siemens AG, ANL A433SZ, Gruendlacher Str. 248, 8510 Fuerth, Germany.
PHONE  +49-911-3089-407 (work) +49-911-331963 (home) +49-911-3089-290 (FAX)
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: INN: "not-for-mail" in pathline...
Date: 11 Nov 1992 12:27:29 -0500
Organization: Mentor Graphics -- IC Group
NNTP-Posting-Host: milk.warren.mentorg.com

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" ?

Given the fact that netnews has "Reply:" and "Reply-To:" headers and
given the fact that replying to what's in the "Path:" header is the
absolute slowest way to get in touch with the author and given the fact
that replying to what's in the "Path:" header never worked reliably and
now barely works at all and given the fact that replying to what's in
the "Path:" header is not what the standard says people should do...

...are you sure you want to do that?

RTFM if you you still need convincing.

Tom
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
   X.400 is the mail system of the future.  Let's keep it that way!
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: mlee@esd.dl.nec.com (Michael Lee)
Subject: symbolic links in C-news?
Organization: NEC America, Engineering & Support Division
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 02:22:47 GMT


I have been told that c news allows you to split your spool area across
several disks.

I have a Sun 3/260 with small disks so I need to be able to use two disks
to hold all the news.

Is it true that this can be done?

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks,


-------------------------------------------------------------------
It is often stated (and certainly true) that the poor have no right
to the wealth of the rich.  It is seldom stated (but equally true)
that the rich have no right to the wealth of the poor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I prefer a small government which may permit some evil to
a large government which promotes evil at my expense.
---------------------------------------------------------

Michael Lee
mlee@esd.dl.nec.com
214-518-3807
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.unix.aix
From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Subject: Re: Cnews vs. AIX (batcher failing)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 23:43:38 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

According to woods@elegant.com (Greg A. Woods):
>I've just discovered another incompatability between C News and AIX v3.
>The batcher was encountering errors from compress whenever an empty
>batch was generated (something about an invalid file descriptor).

AIX's compress was hacked by IBM, who broke it.  Get compress 4.0.1
from GNU, and never worry again.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
   "I am truly as big a genius as all other Rush fans." -- Bruce Bufalini
Xref: sparky news.software.b:3364 news.software.readers:2183
From: dougv@vnet.ibm.com (Doug Valkenaar)
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 13:28:39 PST
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
Subject: NNTP doesn't seem to log properly
Reply-To: exit
Organization: ROLM
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM
News-Software: UReply 3.0

I running NNTP5.11 and cannot seem to get the access_file to work properly.
This is not so bad, but in addition, I cannot seem to get logging to work
either.

I'm running on SunOS 4.1.2.  I've tried the FAKE log stuff as well as the
system log - nothing.  BTW - with the system log, I did modify syslog.conf
so that's not the problem.

Any help or experience anyone has had with this would be appreciated.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Douglas Valkenaar       ROLM PhoneMail         (dougv@vnet.ibm.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Help with expire verbose output
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 04:44:20 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <Bx42sH.L9C@newsflash.concordia.ca> anne@maxwell.concordia.ca (Anne Bennett) writes:
>> >65264 kept, 14376 expired
>> >159734 residual lines
>> >0 links archived, 16793 junked, 30 missing
>> 
>> ... a normal statistics report (that you asked for with -v).
>
>Yes, but what does it *mean*?  Articles kept and expired seems intuitively
>obvious, but what are residual lines, why is "junked" not the same as
>expired, and is it a problem that anything is found to be "missing"? ...

The terminology needs updating to match the docs (that stats code is old).
Residual lines are for articles that have expired.  Junked is a link count,
not an article count.  And missing articles are usually due to cancels.
-- 
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: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: INN and multihomed NNTP clients
Date: 10 Nov 1992 18:15:57 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com


We're running INN 1.0 on a Sun-4 running SunOS 4.1.2 with NIS, and we've
been having a sporadic problem accessing our site NNTP server from a
multihomed Sun.  Our nnrp.access file contains

*.think.com:Read Post:::*

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.
The distance to the NNTP server from each interface is the same, so it's
pretty random which route will be used.  Apparently, when the godot-1
interface is used the NNTP server refuses services to it.

We've gotten around this for now by putting both IP addresses in
nnrp.access, but I don't like having to do this.  Has anyone else seen this
problem, and have a more general solution?
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: How can I rename a newsgroup?
Date: 12 Nov 92 09:14:41 CST
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <00963769F0B6BD40.25200AC9@giant.IntraNet.com>,
 "G. Del Merritt" <del@GIANT.INTRANET.COM> writes:
> I have a bunch of _local_ newsgroups that we use for completely
> internal purposes.  For a variety of reasons (some good, some not so
> good), it has been decided that we'll be renaming newsgroups en masse.
>...  
> I've considered renaming each directory, and then stealthily modifying
> everyone's NEWSRC (we're all on one big, homogeneous cluster ;-).  Is
> there a BETTER way?  An EASIER way?  BOTH?  And has anyone done this?

You can't just change the directory name.  You would need to change
all the references to the name/number in the NEWS database as well.

The easiest way to do this is to create the new groups, put aliases
for the old groups to the new groups in news.aliases, and then do:

NEWS> ADD FILE/RETRY NEWS_DEVICE:[old.group.name]*.itm

for each group. Users will have to skip the articles in the new
groups.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444
From: mcdonald@dallas.sil.org
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: How to restrict news from mail feed?
Date: 5 Nov 92 14:23:21 GMT
Organization: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas Center

Running ANU-NEWS 6.1 (distributed with DECUS UUCP 2.0)  under VMS 5.5-1...
I'm currently getting a small feed by mail in addition to my usual uucp
feeds.   My mail feed is starting to send a few rogue messages that my uucp
feed does not want.  How can I restrict those messages locally?

I am not using a NEWS.DISTRIBUTIONS file.  Here is my latest attempt at a
NEWS.SYS file:

#My site:
dalsil:\
bit,biz,comp,dfw,gnu,misc,news,rec,sci,snet,soc,talk,to,tx,vmsnet,\
!alt,\
local,junk,control,general:::world,na,usa,tx,dfw,

# supposed to just feed me SNET via mail, but occasionally sends other
# groups...
acuvax.acu.edu:/me\
snet,to.sil\
local,junk,control,general\
:BN:NEWS_MANAGER_DEV/[POST_MAIL_ACUVAX]NEWS.BATCH^B

# not supposed to get SNET, anything else from acuvax fine.
fallout.lonestar.org/mapsink,txsil:\
all,\
!comp,!control,!misc,!news,!snet,!tx,!vmsnet,\
local,junk,control,general\
:B:NEWS_MANAGER_DEV/[POST_UUCP$CMPRS_FALLOUT]NEWS.BATCH^B:world,na,usa,tx,dfw

# main feed - does not want me feeding him anything but local posts.
lerami/mapsink,txsil,fallout.lonestar.org:\
all,\
!alt,!snet,!to,\
local,junk,control,general\
:B:NEWS_MANAGER_DEV/[POST_UUCP$CMPRS_LERAMI]NEWS.BATCH^B:world,na,usa,tx,dfw

# I feed him - he posts elsewhere.  OK to send him stuff from ACUVAX
txsil/fallout.lonestar.org:\
to,comp,news,rec,soc,sci,\
!alt,!snet,\
!alt.sex,!alt.sex.bondage,!alt.sex.bestiality,\
local,junk,control,general\
:B:NEWS_MANAGER_DEV/[POST_UUCP$CMPRS_TXSIL]NEWS.BATCH^B:world,na,usa,tx,dfw

Any help in straightening this out would be most appreciated.

******************************************************************************
Dan McDonald                    * UUCP      ...utacfd!dalsil!mcdonald
Dallas Computer Services	* Internet  mcdonald@dallas.sil.org
Summer Institute of Linguistics * ATTmail   sil!mcdonald
7500 W Camp Wisdom Rd           * SILnet    MCDONALD@AM@DALLAS
Dallas, TX 75236                * FAXnet    (214)709-3387
USA                             * POTSnet   (214)709-3389
******************************************************************************
x.400: C=US; ADMD=WESTERN UNION; O=SIL; DDA.ELN=62897168
      include "VMS MAIL: DAN.MCDONALD" in text for automated delivery :-(
******************************************************************************
From: bart@et.tudelft.nl
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: SEARCH command in version 6.1b5
Date: 11 Nov 92 10:02:30 +0200
Organization: TU-Delft, dpt of Electrical Engineering

Hello,

I have just installed ANU-news V6.1B5 and found the following change in
behaviour of the SEARCH command.

In version 6.0-3 'SEARCH string' would search the current newsgroup, starting
with the current article for the occurence of 'string'. A subsequent 'SEARCH'
without an argument would search for the next occurrence of 'string'.

Now in 6.1B5 the first SEARCH command insists on specifying a newsgroup and
when I specify the current newsgroup explicitly, it starts the search at the
first article in stead of at the current one.

I would like to know if this is an intended change or a possible bug.

Thanks in advance for any information.

Bart Zorn
Delft University of Technology
From: kraftjoel@bvc.edu
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: NEWS_STOP and nntp
Date: 10 Nov 92 14:44:27 CDT
Organization: Buena Vista College, Storm Lake, IA

> Is that the way it was intended? Even now that we've moved our NEWS system
> over to C-news, I'd still like to use the NEWS_STOP concept as it allows
> me to tell the VAX users when C-News is down - currently they have to just
> sit there and wait for the timeout :-(
> 
> BTW: I currently get around this by defining NEWS as a .COM file - but then
> all the qualifiers to NEWS don't work.

I use a .COM file to run news and it seems to work pretty well.  It has some
nice advantages like giving more graceful messages when NEWS is down, and also
allows me to put up a message screen and a little message saying "Please be
patient" for the users to look at during the minute or so it takes news to
start up.  I can also curb the little annoyances with little messages to the
users.  For example, if one person goes into news many times in a single login
session, a message appears telling them how to use the SPAWN command, etc.
You can get around the qualifiers by defining news like this:

		$news :== @news_exe:news.com $$$

And then in news.com, news is actually invoked by the following:

		$startnews := $news_exe:news
		$startnews 'p2 'p3 'p4 'p5 'p6 'p7 'p8

-----

I do have a problem with NEWS_STOP though.  When I define NEWS_STOP on the
node that is running the NNTP_TCPUCXM server process, the server correctly
stops accepting connections, but it doesn't actually close the NEWS.GROUPS
and NEWS.ITEMS files which means that I have to kill off the process before
I can CONVERT the files anyway.  Is this how that _should_ work?  I was under
the impression that they should get closed, but I guess I've never seen the
other versions either, so I don't know.  If it should close them, I'm going
to go hack it in there...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel D. Kraft         |  It's not quite the middle of nowhere...
System Manager        |     but you can definitely see it from here...
Buena Vista College   |        It's called NEBRASKA!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: News not forwarding articles!
Date: 13 Nov 92 04:15:04 GMT
Organization: St. Peter's College, US

In article <1992Nov12.094256.44670@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) writes:
> I have NEWS.SYS file entryies that are a LOT larger than anything you
> have here(40+ lines), and they seem to be working OK.  You might try
> using the SHOW SYS command to see what NEWS thinks the entry actually
> looks like.  What do you mean by "NOT properly distributed"? Do the
> article get put in the NEWS.BATCH files? If you delete the magdalen
> entry, do things start working again? Does moving the magdalen entry
> around in the NEWS.SYS file make any difference?

  I found a similar strangeness a few weeks ago (6.1B4). A new site that
I added was receiving traffic fine, but items they posted would arrive
here and be fed to our other leaf nodes, but not to our main feed. After
a lot of head-scratching, I found that our main feed had changed to a
domainless form of their name, while my news.distribution file has them
listed with a domainized form.

  I am at a loss to understand how this relates to the problem, and also
why only 1 of my 4 leaf nodes was affected. Sigh. Just another ANU mystery.

  BTW, SHOW SYS appears to not be documented in the help.

	Terry Kennedy		Operations Manager, Academic Computing
	terry@spcvxa.bitnet	St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
	terry@spcvxa.spc.edu	+1 201 915 9381
From: res_ewv@exodus.valpo.edu
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Looking for some kind person(s) to take over ANU NEWS maintenance
Date: 13 Nov 92 00:54:34 GMT
Organization: Valparaiso University
X-Posted-From: exodus.valpo.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <9211122121.AA04032@cruskit.aarnet.edu.au>, Geoff Huston <G.Huston@AARNET.EDU.AU> writes:

> I'm  interested  in  hearing  from  any person (or working group) who would be
> prepared to look after the code from here on.

Not knowing any C myself, I can't volunteer to do this, but what I would really
like to see is a group of people who support the program in the same way as the
portable ZIP is supported.  Free software at it's best.

> To roughly quote Douglas Adams: "so long, and thanks for all the fish"  :-)

So long and thanks for an awesome program.

> Geoff

                                                                               
                              Eric W. Vaandering                               
  ____________________________________________________________________________ 
 |BITNet:    RES_EWV@VALPO                    USPS Net:  Eric Vaandering      |
 |InterNet:  RES_EWV@exodus.valpo.edu                    Brandt Hall          |
 |PhoneNet:  (219) 464-5868                              Valparaiso, IN 46383 |
 |____________________________________________________________________________|
 |                                                                            |
 |                  "Only the insane have strength to prosper.                |
 |                   Only those that prosper judge what is sane."             |
 |____________________________________________________________________________|
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: NNTP Client ANU-News?
Date: 5 Nov 92 14:42:33 GMT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1d8vk0INN4hl@dapsun.lif.icnet.uk>,
 r_coop@dapsun.lif.icnet.uk (Richard Coop) writes:
>>In other words we like ANU news and before we upgrade it to its latest
>>release would like to get our v5.7 running as a diskless client so that
>>when users login and type news it automatically accesses the active file
>>on the remote Sun server without any hastle modifying groups so they are
>>NNTP served. Vnews in this respect is very easy to use.

V5.7 doesn't support diskless client operation.  You have to upgrade
to at least V6.0 to have a client only configuration. Currently, I
would recommend V6.0-3, available from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu via
anonymous ftp.  If you don't mind putting up with a beta test version,
V6.1 Beta 5 is available from sao.aarnet.edu.au.  Be aware that the
beta test versions have some problems.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444
From: ewilts@galaxy.gov.bc.ca (Ed Wilts)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Cannot access item text
Date: 10 Nov 92 19:45:03 -0800
Reply-To: EWILTS@GALAXY.GOV.BC.CA
Organization: BC Systems Corporation

In article <1992Nov10.134735.1036@beckman.com>, dsroberts@beckman.com writes:
> On November 7 my ANU-news server added a LARGE (hundreds) number of news item
> headers which, when attempting to access, get the error
> 
> ...cannot access item text

I've been there and it isn't a pretty sight :-(.  You're in for a major fixup.
What happened to me was that we exceeded the maximum number of files on the
disk.  To verify this, simply go into one of the item directories and try to
create a file - if you've got the same problem I had, the create will fail.

> Does anyone know what causes this, and better yet, what can be done from the
> anu side to prevent it?  ANU 6.0-3, VMS 5.5, MultiNet 3.1

Make sure that everything that's supposed to go on your disk can.  What should
probably be done is that the add program should confirm that the message can
be added to the index file as well as the physical file creation and back out
of the entire batch if it can't.  Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to make
these modifications myself.

-- 

Ed Wilts, BC Systems Corp., 4000 Seymour Place, Victoria, B.C., Canada, V8X 4S8
EWilts@Galaxy.Gov.BC.CA     Office:  (604) 389-3430    Fax: (604) 389-3412
From: munroe@dmc.com (Dick Munroe)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: News not forwarding articles!
Date: 13 Nov 92 07:00:16 EST
Organization: Doyle, Munroe Consultants, Inc., Hudson, MA

In article <1992Nov13.062710.4692@dmc.com>, munroe@dmc.com (Dick Munroe) writes:
> In article <1992Nov12.071256.4690@dmc.com>, munroe@dmc.com (Dick Munroe) writes:
> Well, it turns out the disk had filled up and news simply wasn't able to create
> any articles on the output disk.  Fine, but there SHOULD be some sort of
> message to that effect in the RNEWS logs.  Any chance at getting notifications
> of errors during article creation/insertion?
> 
> I'm not 100% sure that this is the case as I'm still waiting for my news feed
> from UUNET to start this morning, but the disk full SHOULD be the problem.

Nope, news is STILL not forwarding items to any of my downstream feeds.  I have
verified that the disk now has plenty of headers, news that originates here
goes out just fine, news that comes in from UUNET doesn't go anywhere.

Any help that can be offered (even pointers to the 6.1 sources so I can chase
the problem myself) would be greatly appreciated.
-- 
Dick Munroe				Internet: munroe@dmc.com
Doyle Munroe Consultants, Inc.		UUCP: ...uunet!thehulk!munroe
267 Cox St.				Office: (508) 568-1618
Hudson, Ma.				FAX: (508) 562-1133

GET CONNECTED!!! Send mail to info@dmc.com to find out about DMConnection.
From: rankin@eql.caltech.edu (Pat Rankin)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Does the News NNTP client require privledge?
Date: 12 Nov 1992 20:52 PDT
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: eql.caltech.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Nov12.153117.486@hhcs.gov.au>,\
 makinc@hhcs.gov.au (Carl Makin) writes...
> Does the version of News running solely as a NNTP client require
> SYSPRV and SYSLCK.

     Not to access the news itself, but such privileges may be needed in
order to send email from within NEWS.  On our system SYSLCK is definitely
needed (Software Tools Mailer in a master/slave cluster configuration).
I'm not sure whether SYSPRV is needed here at present, but I believe that
it has been necessary at one time or another.

		Pat Rankin, rankin@eql.caltech.edu