HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: forrie@morwyn.uucp (Forrie Aldrich)
Subject: News administration (CNews, mostly)
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Vision Graphics
			  Dover, NH
			  USA
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 22:33:20 GMT


I don't know if this is an original idea (probably not) but...

In an effort to 'simplify' news administration, from everything
to expiration (setting the parameters, etc) to creating new groups,
would it be feasible to create a menu-operated system to do this?

Such a system would likely be fairly involved (as far as coding
is concerned), but I would imagine many people to appreciate such
a monster.  I was thinking along the lines of something that
utilized Curses... perhaps CursePerl scripts?

If something like this exists, please let me know as I would like
to look at it, and perhaps use it.

Thank you.

Forrest
(please respond via email)
-- 
	   -----------	      Forrest Aldrich	      -----------
	   -------     morwyn!forrie@unhtel.unh.edu	  -------
	   ----						     ----
	   --	     VISION GRAPHICS --	Dover, NH - USA	       --
	   ------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: jerry@strobe.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Jerry Aguirre)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Followup-To: news.admin.technical
Summary: read via NFS and post via NNTP
Keywords: NNTP
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino CA, USA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:34:08 GMT

In article <BuBsJp.IHn@ux1.isu.edu> ntmtv!harthc@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Howard Hart) writes:
>Don't forget that wonderful feature of NFS when partitions are mounted
>read/write (such as the case where you have to mount the news batch
>directory read/write for users to post articles). Don't know about
>other machines, but on Sun's, if you loose the server, the client
>hangs indefinitely (I was told at one time that NFS writes have

I suggest that you investigate the NFS mount options of "hard", "soft",
and interuptable ("intr").  It is true that a hard NFS mount will hang
the processes attempting to access a down server but by mounting them
soft they will eventually time out.  Mounting via "intr" is probably
more appropriate as it allows the user to decide whether to wait for
the server to come back or interupt and try again later.

Man puts gasoline in tank and then uses match to check level causing
explosion.  Advises people to avoid gasoline powered cars.

Most people who use NFS for reading news export it read-only and still
use NNTP for posting.  It is only recent versions of C news that have
the potential for putting postings in a directory to be processed later.
(And that was not for NFS but to simplify some portability/permissions
issues.)

Speaking of security, a while back the issue of NFS vs. NNTP came up and
one site described their setup using NFS and how they could never
support the same load using NNTP.  I followed their directions and, sure
enough, was able to NFS mount their news partition, via the internet!

I wonder how many sites out there have news and other partitions
mountable from outside their institution.  I suggest sites configure
their routers to block RPC on external lines.  (And rlogin, rsh, etc.)
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Keywords: NNTP
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 14:26:52 GMT

In article <BuDI5v.2zH@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes:
>[...]  Second, if people are reading news via NNTP when the server or
>the net goes down, their newsreaders generally exit rudely, losing whatever
>variables, filenames, etc they've modified during the session.

Is this necessarily true?  It doesn't seem to be the case with rn/trn... sure,
it exits, but it writes out my newsrc, etc., before it does as far as I can
tell.  

>With NFS,
>they can leave the newsreader running (but hung) and start re-reading
>immediately when the server comes back up.

I think whether or not this is a good argument for NFS vs. NNTP depends
a lot on how frequently your newsserver goes down.  ;-)

>My worst problem with using NFS for reading news is that I can't tell who's
>reading news at any given time, so I can't tell who out of the 200 possible
>users need to be warned if the server is coming down.  At least with NNTP
>you've got a netstat display.

Also, it is very easy to customize NNTP to give you all sorts of statistics
with regard to news usage.

>> I'd strongly recommend NNTP-only.
>
>I'd recommend NFS for reading, news soft-mounted read-only, NNTP for
>posting.

I think one very important argument that has been left out of this whole
discussion is the question of availability of NFS on different platforms.
Sure you _can_ get NFS for most platforms, but on personal computers it
may not be the best choice.  On the other hand the simplicity of NNTP makes
it very easy to implement clients for any platform that has a TCP/IP
implementation, making it much more universal.  Newsreaders have recently
appeared for Macs and PCs, some of them quite good.

Of course using NNTP does not preclude using NFS as well where it's
available and appropriate.  My sense from a system management viewpoint
would to support NNTP first, and then give an NFS mount to anyone who
has the capability and wants the greater flexibility that NFS provides.
--
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
Xref: sparky news.software.b:2865 news.software.nntp:1096
From: pgreen@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Philip Green)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Subject: How to determine # of articles & Mbytes per day
Date: 4 Sep 92 21:53:47 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM

What is the best way to determine the number or articles and
megabytes that we receive per day? We are running C-news and
receive our feed via nntp. I have been collecting the number of
articles per day by counting the number of lines in the log 
file which I believe is accurate. I have not yet decided on
how to determine how many megabytes we receive per day.
I was going to do a df before and after expire but I realize
that other factors will make this invalid(history file and such).
Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks

-- 
Phil Green                           	pgreen@aoc.nrao.edu
NRAO					505.835.7294
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: kevin@kosman.uucp (Kevin O'Gorman)
Subject: Is something slowing down my c-news?
Organization: Vital Software Services, Oxnard, CA
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 16:26:49 GMT

I don't really know where to begin with this question.  The facts are that
I'm maintaining news on two sites.  One of them is a fairly fast machine,
but news is excruciatingly slow on it all of a sudden.  The other has the
same version of C-news and is running fine, albeit with a comparatively
restricted feed.

It had a logjam this week, so I was watching it process 1000 batches of
inbound news; it took 2 days.  By looking at the log file, I calculated that's
20 articles a minute, one every 3 seconds.  I'm not impressed.  During much
of this time, the machine had no other load.  The input stream is nntp, and
the batches are not compressed.

Also, I looked this morning at 9 AM, and found expire still running, having
been started at 5 AM.  Granted, this machine takes a very full feed, but isn't
this a lot of time?  We don't retain much beyond 4 days, and nothing beyond 7.
Well, history is kept longer, I don't remember how long.

What questions should I be asking?
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: BNF rule for newsgroup names?
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
	<338@blars.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 17:18:30 GMT

me:
>>Yes.  There is ancient precedent: net.micro.432 (the incredibly slow Ada
>>engine from Intel).

blarson@blars.UUCP:
>And there is almost as old figuring out that allowing such names was a
>realy bad idea with the then-existing software.  (Still is with most of
>the newer packages.)

Not as I recall; B News coped just fine and C News continues to cope.

someone else:
>-- if there was, what did they do when they hit article 432? . . .

blarson:
>Something wonderful.  Use your imagination: the directory was opened
>for writing and the article replaced the directory entries. :-)

Not on Unix anyway.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff

``Leave the evil grasping to us.'' - A. L. Arms, UNIX licensing, WECo.
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: brister@pa.dec.com (James Brister)
Subject: Testing INN's newsfeeds file.
Originator: brister@tirade
Organization: DEC Western Software Lab
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 92 23:17:14 GMT

I'm starting to convert a CNews machine over to INN and I need to get the
newfeeds file as close to perfect as possible the first time out so that
certain groups don't escape. Questions for any gurus out there:

	1) Is there a way to have inn report where it would send an article
	   given a specified newsgroup and distribution without actually
	   doing it?

if not then perhaps someone can answer the following questions:

	2) If I want to (for example) block rec and any
	   newsgroup under it except for rec.bicycles.soc, then which of 
	   these patterns would I use?

		!rec*, rec.bicycles.soc

		!rec, !rec.*, rec.bicycles.soc

	   (the wildmat(3) man page seems to imply the first one).

	3) Is there a flag in the newfeeds file I haven't seen that 
	   will cause the entire article being processed to be written
	   down a pipe to a subprocess. (like having '::' as the third 
	   field in a CNews sys file).

Thanks much

James
-- 
James Brister                                           brister@wsl.pa.dec.com
DEC Western Software Lab., Palo Alto, CA                        decwrl!brister
From: wdh@grouper.mkt.csd.harris.com (W. David Higgins)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: INN Message-ID validation
Date: 11 Sep 92 02:45:52 GMT
Organization: Harris CSD, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

I've been running a trial balloon installation of INN 1.1 here and have
noticed the Message-ID validation is much stricter than either Bnews
or Cnews.  Not that this is a bad thing, but I was surprised the see
the number of articles that B and C news accepts that INN rejects.

The two most common errors seem to be a trailing '.' in the domain
name (e.g. <one.bad.message@universal.widgets.com.>) and a ":" in
the local part (e.g. <920909-bogus-12:01:02@bzzzzt.edu>).
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: fenner@postscript.cs.psu.edu (Bill Fenner)
Subject: Re: BNF rule for newsgroup names?
Organization: Penn State Computer Science
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:31:57 GMT

In article <BuLB9y.7Dp@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes:
|Yes.  There is ancient precedent: net.micro.432 (the incredibly slow Ada
|engine from Intel).

Presumably, there was no "net.micro" -- if there was, what did they do when
they hit article 432? . . .

  Bill
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: RE: Anyone have nntp_tcpucxm.c from ualret.ualr.edu?
From: Geoff Huston <G.Huston@AARNET.EDU.AU>
Date: 07 Sep 1992 08:31:19 +1000
Reply-To: Geoff Huston <G.Huston@AARNET.EDU.AU>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

> I need to get a hold of the UCX NNTP_SERVER implementation from
> ualret.ualr.edu, but that host is down and I haven't been able to
> locate it elsewhere. Would anybody have a copy handy that they could
> e-mail to me or that I could ftp from somewhere else?
 
ftp sao.aarnet.edu.au:/anu-news/news_v61-beta4_*.*
 
there are files in the source saveset of the form ualr*.* which are the
ones you're after
 
Geoff
From: connelly@iscsvax.uni.edu (Ken Connelly)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Life used to be simple . . .
Date: 8 Sep 92 14:29:14 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

We've been an "end-node" using ANU for about a year now.  In my news.sys
file, the "flag" for my feed was an "N".  We're using nntp via MultiNet.

I decided I needed some excitement in my life, so I agreed to feed a new
site.  That started today.  I think I have things set up properly because
items that come in from my upstream site appear to be forwarded downstream. 
The downstream site hasn't started posting yet, but I am relatively
comfortable that those items will be forwarded upstream when they start
arriving.

I changed the "flag" setting in news.sys to "nx", on both the upstream and
downstream nodes.  Is that the "best" thing to use?  I'm pretty sure I need
to be using an indexed file instead of a sequential one, and from the
comments in news.sys, I don't think there are any other good choices, but
it never hurts to ask.  :-)  What say the collective wisdom of this group?

-- 
===========================================================================
Ken Connelly, Systems/Operations Manager         Internet: connelly@uni.edu
Information Systems and Computing Services
University of Northern Iowa                       USWestNet: (319) 273-2357
Cedar Falls, IA  50614-0121                             FAX: (319) 273-3509
As time goes on, it becomes more and more apparent that elected officials 
should be required to pass a competency test.  Then we wouldn't have any, 
and all would be right with the world!
===========================================================================
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
From: fsars@acad3.alaska.edu (Allen R Sparks)
Subject: Re: SET DEF/FAST
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 05:32:35 GMT

In article <1992Sep13.222845.1@acad3.alaska.edu>, tftfm@acad3.alaska.edu (Tom McGrane) writes:
> When SET DEF/FAST is set, DIR/ALL acts like it's going to retrieve a 
> listing of all groups, but then doesn't.
> 
> Using REGISTER newgroup.name  doesn't work, either.  
> 
> Can one register for new groups with FAST set, or do you have to 
> SET DEF/NOFAST, EXIT, then come back in?
> 
> 
> When I do do that, any empty group I'm registered for shows one unread 
> message, but none are there.

Yeah, you can SET DEF/NOFAST, EXIT and come back in.  But it's too
much of a pain.  EXIT, edit your NEWSRC. file and add the new group,
and go back in.  All you need to do is add the group.group and don't
forget the semi-colon at the end.  You might as well add the "(1)"
also so you don't have to REGISTER it once you get back into NEWS. 
Below is an example of an old NEWSRC. file I had, and the bottom entry
is one I added.  I underlined a portion of it for emphasis.  

I'll add that I'm no longer registered to any of the groups on the
list.  Well, maybe once in awhile I have a taste of alt.tasteless. 
=== Al Sparks

~hayes.ims.alaska.edu 2~>0 soc.culture.yugoslavia 300^1
rec.arts.comics: (1) [62,21113] <1
alt.activism: (1) [277,12153] <0
alt.alien.visitors: (1) [435,477] <0
alt.tasteless: (1)
             ^^^^^
From: connelly@iscsvax.uni.edu (Ken Connelly)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: Life used to be simple . . .
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <1992Sep9.085847.42858@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) writes:
> Using NX creates indexed files that never get deleted, and thus grow
> infinitly large unless you do something about them.  I have also heard
> reports that the indexed files get deleted when NNTP_XMIT is unable to
> contact the server.  I haven't been able to verify this, since I don't
> use indexed files.

??  

My indexed files get deleted when they get emptied by nntp_xmit.  I had
thought about this potential problem when I decided to try things this way. 
I had also decided that I would simply add them to the NEWSPACK routine if
they became a problem.  So far, no problems that way.
-- 
===========================================================================
Ken Connelly, Systems/Operations Manager         Internet: connelly@uni.edu
Information Systems and Computing Services
University of Northern Iowa                       USWestNet: (319) 273-2357
Cedar Falls, IA  50614-0121                             FAX: (319) 273-3509
As time goes on, it becomes more and more apparent that elected officials 
should be required to pass a competency test.  Then we wouldn't have any, 
and all would be right with the world!
===========================================================================
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: RE: Problem adding a newsgroup
From: Geoff Huston <G.Huston@AARNET.EDU.AU>
Date: 09 Sep 1992 08:26:56 +1000
Reply-To: Geoff Huston <G.Huston@AARNET.EDU.AU>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

> I just added a newsgroup request to my checkgroups file.  I then executed
> an ADD FILE but received the following message instead of a mail message
> with a file which I would extract and execute to actually add the new
> group.  Can somebody tell my what I'm doinwg wrong?
>
> Here is the results of the ADD FILE
>
> $ news/noscreen add file whs_checkgroups.txt
>         VMS News - V6.1 (24-Feb-1992)      [NewsManager Access Enabled]
>
>
> Add - Reading file: DUA0:[UUCP.DOC.NEWS_SETUP]WHS_CHECKGROUPS.TXT;30 (13142
> byte
> s)
>
> Add  news.admin.ctl,junk.ctl: REJECT (No Message-ID)
>
>
> ...And here are the first few lines of my checkgroups file...
>
> Newsgroups: news.admin.ctl,junk.ctl
> Distribution: local
> Approved: whscdp!kmoch@spool.mu.edu
> From: news@whscdp.whs.edu
> Subject: cmsg checkgroups
> Control: checkgroups
>
> alt.bbs.internet        BBS systems accessible via the Internet.
> alt.cobol               Use of the programming language COBOL.
 
 
Its necessary for every posting to have a header of the form
 
 
i.e.
Newsgroups: news.admin.ctl,junk.ctl
Distribution: local
From: news@whscdp.whs.edu
Subject: cmsg checkgroups
Control: checkgroups
 
alt.bbs.internet        BBS systems accessible via the Internet.
alt.cobol               Use of the programming language COBOL.
 
 
 
Geoff
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: RE: OPEN/MAIL bug
From: READER@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR
Date: 14 Sep 1992 09:34:00 -0300
Reply-To: READER@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR
X-VMS-To: IN%"anu-news@ndsuvm1"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

From:   IN%"newsmgr@VAX1.UTULSA.EDU"  "(Beelzebub)" 10-SEP-1992 22:19 10-SEP-199
   2 22:19:00.00
 
>I'm having problems with a strange bug, has anyone else encountered it?
 
>A student used the OPEN/MAIL command to access his VMS Mail file.  When he
>opened the NEWMAIL folder and read the message, a brief VMS error flashed upon
>the screen (too quick to read), and then NEWS hung.  After logging in again,
>he got the 1 New Mail Message reminder.  He has no new mail, however.  We have
>deleted all Mail files, backed up the other files, deleted the account/files,
>then restored it, but it still happens!  Any suggestions?
>
>Running:  VMS 5.5  ANU NEWS 6.0-3
>
 
  I have the same problem here, and a couple of weeks ago I asked the same
question... but nobody posted a reply. There is also another problem: when you
exit news, it purges your wastebasket folder, even if you have NOAUTOPURGE set
in your mail profile. It can take a long time, if the user receives a lot of
messages per day (I'm one of these users... :-(.
  The flashing message is "MAIL-E-INVITMCOD, invalid item code"
 
  Anybody has a patch?
  Thanks,
 
        Gelson D. Santos        gelson@vortex.ufrgs.br
                                newsmgr@vortex.ufrgs.br
From: ip_boss@degsyd.syd.deg.csiro.au (Jack Churchill)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Threads
Date: 9 Sep 92 16:27:57 +1000
Organization: CSIRO, Exploration Geoscience

I hear VMS NEWS is now a threaded news reader.  Any plans for ANU NEWS
to offer similar options (if not already)?  Anybody have a good feel of
the differences between the two (in others words which is better :-)?
-- 
  Jack N. Churchill                            | jack@syd.deg.csiro.au
** Unless otherwise specified, the opinions expressed here are my own. **
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Using C-News as the server...
From: cctr127@csc.canterbury.ac.nz
Date: 6 Sep 92 12:18:07 +1200
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand


Hi,

Anyone have any experience running ANU-NEWS as a client off a C-News server? 

I'm wanting to try it out, but I've noticed that the likes of posting dates
don't get written reliably on a DIRECTORY scan - so I guess there's a problem
with either C-News or ANU-NEWS (the former I guess ;-). Also, are there any
patches that would make C-News more like the NNTP server in ANU - just to make
life easier on the VMS clients? 

Also, a while back I remember reading in the FAQ on newsreaders that Geoff was
looking into writing a cut-down version of ANU-NEWS as a pure client - is that
true? 

Cheers

Jason Haar
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
From: chris@univrs.decnet.lockheed.com
Subject: CMUTEK Display-cannot access item text
Organization: Lockheed Palo Alto Research Labs
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 21:11:01 GMT

  A while back I posted here asking if anybody had experienced the problem
with ANU News using the CMUTEK transport as an NNTP client whereby after you
have "idled" ANU News (no communication with client) for a few minutes, as
when reading a long posting, subsequent attempts to advance to the next message
simply result in a "Display - cannot access item text" error.  An UPDATE
command will clear this condition, but since UPDATE can take a while this
can be kind of annoying.  This problem is similar but different to the one with
UCX, but I find no references to "keepalive" in the CMUTEK doc I have available
to me so I'm not sure the cause is related, or at least fixable in an easy way.

  I received two suggestions: (1) That this is an inherent problem with the
NNTP server, which is designed for batch transfers that issue commands
quickly and repeatedly, rather than waiting around for you to read an article
before issuing the next command, and (2) That this is an inherent problem with
CMUTEK, for which the respondent had not found a fix.  (1) doesn't -seem-
to be the cause of the problem since I can telnet to the NNTP server port
and wait for tens of minutes between issuing commands and it still works like
a charm, so I am leaning to (2).

  Has anybody else seen this problem and fixed it?  ANU News 6.0-3.

Thanks in advance,
 -Chris Rhode
  Software Project Lead, Distributed Computer Systems Support
  Lockheed Research Labs, Palo Alto, CA USA
  (415) 424-2823  chris@lmsc.lockheed.com
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
From: campanella@cvg.enet.dec.com
Subject: Error using DECNET
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 01:00:50 GMT


Anyone ever seen this?  Got any clues on how to remedy it?  I got it running the
nntp_client program, and none of the options seem to make a difference.  This
error occurs when I try to use DECNET.  UCX works fine.

recv: non-translatable vms error code: 0x13C, vms message:
%system-f-ivchan, invalid i/o channel
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: distribution header
From: SMOLENOVA@CSBBYS51.BITNET
Date: 11 Sep 1992 15:20:16 +0100
Reply-To: SMOLENOVA@CSBBYS51.BITNET
X-VMS-To: IN%"anu-news@ndsuvm1"
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Hello,
our post articles have implicitly line Distribution: world in their
header (I added this option some time ago). How could I remove
this line from header of articles?
Thank you for your answer.
Sincerely                               Magda Smolenova
                                e-mail: smolenova@uakom.cs
                                        smolenova@csbbys51
**************************************************************