From: dnichols@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols)
Subject: Re: Taylor uucp 1.4 gamma on 3B1 with TCP
Organization: D and D Data, Vienna VA
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 03:35:40 GMT

In article <1993Jan23.143741.24111@blilly.uucp> lilb@sony.compuserve.com (Bruce Lilly) writes:
>In article <1993Jan21.123039.8504@ohare.Chicago.COM>,
> posted to comp.sys.3b1,
> kls@ohare.Chicago.COM (Karl Swartz) wrote:
>>In article <1993Jan20.045619.1333@d-and-d.com> dnichols@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) writes:
>>
>>unambiguous about why I chose the path I did -- getting NNTP going
>>would seem to be a lot more work than getting Taylor uucp up, and
>
>Not from the sound of things. Getting nntp 1.5.11 and successors
>running on the 3b1 is fairly simple.

	Glad to hear that.  I may go through the exercise, even though
nobody uses my 3B1s from the console these days.

>>Did I say the two had identical feeds?  I don't believe I did.  One
>>machine carries a full feed, distributing all or parts of it along to
>>other machines (including my second machine) and then getting rid of
>>it to make room for the next wave as quickly as possible.  The other
>>gets a small feed of stuff I really want, and keeps it around as long
>>as I need.  If I read news on the primary machine it'd miss most of
>>the discussions I might be interested in, not to mention the problem
>>of falling asleep because the thing is so damned slow.
>
>Though you didn't say so, it sounds like your "second machine"
>gets a subset of the groups carried by "One machine". If that's
>the case, I'd definitely have to agree with Don. If you're
>transferring articles or batches between the two machines,
>you're contributing to the slowness problem, and using a lot of
>disk space as well.  Transferring the articles in batches

	[ ... ]

>You've changed the nature of your network from a point-to-point,
>store-and-forward connection using UUCP to a packet-switched,
>bus-oriented connection using Ethernet(TM) and TCP/IP. That's a
>substantial change, and it is possible to achieve several
>efficiencies.  Some thought is warranted.  Certainly you can
>impose the point-to-pont, store-and-forward limitations of UUCP
>on your new network, but why would you want to cause so much
>trouble for yourself?

	I think that his primary problem is inadequate news spool disk space
on the "One machine".  Given that, and since he can't reduce the space used
by the news spool (/usr/spool/uucp or /var/spool/uucp may be on a
different partition), it may make since to use it to forward certain
newsgroups to a second machine quickly, and then expire the news on the
first.  However, C-news comes with 'viarsh' scripts which are quite adequate
for exchanging news between a Sun and a 3B1, as I've proven during my
transition phase.  The primary thing is that the scripts on the 3b1 need to
replace 'rsh' with remsh' in the interests of getting off the local machine,
instead of getting locked into a *restricted* shell.  (Aren't flavor
differences fun. :-)

	It may also be lack of experience with the TCP/IP utilities, and
lots of experience with uucp that is motivating his choices.  In any case,
they are *his* choices, and we can only offer advice.

	Yes, I agree that he has fewer critical points of failure with
everything spooled on a single machine, and accessed via nntp (as I do), but
it may have been cheaper to get the ethernet card for the 3B1 than to get
enough disk for the primary machine.  (I don't remember what that machine
was, or even whether it was spelled out.  If it is another 3B1, and neither
of them are modified to allow two disks, and bigger disks, then he is
probably stuck.)  Even with a Priam as one of the two disks on my 7300, I
had spool overflow problems from time to time, usually when the maps came
flooding in. (Of course, a large chunk of space was tied up with my sources
tree, and another part with the archiving of groups of interest between
shuffling them of to tape.

	Good Luck All
		DoN.

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