HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cowleym@Schulz.UniSA.edu.au
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: INN installation malloc problem
Date: 3 Sep 92 02:29:01 GMT
Reply-To: cowleym@Schulz.UniSA.edu.au ()
Organization: University of South Australia


Thanks to James (brister@wsl.dec.com)

LINTFLAGS was set to -b -h -x $(DEFS) instead of
		     -b -u -x $(DEFS)
so malloc passes the lint test. Now, to get patch to work! :(
--
AusMail: Margaret Cowley, UniSA, Schulz Building, Kintore Ave.,Adelaide,SAust.
E-Mail : cowleym@Schulz.UniSA.edu.au, Phone:+61 8 302 1627, FAX:+61 8 302 2602
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: corrupt lines in history file (Cnews)
From: russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Fulton)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 05:32:34 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

expire is complaining about a line in the history file:

expire problems:
expire: wrong number of fields in history `<1992Aug19.030637.19197@schaefer.math.wi...'

The problem appears to be that the message id field has a lot of trailing
blanks before the tab. I don't think there is any way of fixing this with
an editor without screwing up the dbz index.(Any attempt to remove the 
blanks will alter the offset of all following records).

Is there a way to rebuild the indexes for a history file after it has
been manually changed? Or will I have to run mkhistory to rebuild the
history file from scratch?

(From a quick look at expire.c expire rebuilds the indexes
itself rather than calling any external program to do this.)

A suggestion for a future release: That an option be added to expire that
causes bad lines in the history file to be written out to a separate
file and not propagated to the new history file. The usual mail message
would be sent. This would avoid the need for a very expensive rebuild
of the history file for the sake of a single corrupt record. (with the
possibility that the corruption will still be there because of some
problem with the article header.)

Thanks, Russell.
-- 
Russell Fulton, Computer Center, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
<rj_fulton@aukuni.ac.nz>
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Help transmitting articles with Cnews (please :)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 20:05:28 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <BtJqJF.9Eq@ernest.dseg.ti.com> alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com (Alan Edmonds) writes:
>I could be an idiot, but shouldn't you use the 'n' flag instead of
>the 'F' flag?  The 'n' flag puts the article pathas and message id 
>in the togo file, saving a lot of article look ups for message ids.

Generally better, assuming your NNTP software can cope.  I think the
modern releases can, but haven't checked carefully.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: relaynews vs the "threaded" newsreaders
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 13:38:19 GMT

Ross Ridge:
>I really don't if you can really make that seperation with trn.  With trn
>you select entire threads, and those threads are defined by the link data.

That certainly is the user interface; what I'm trying to determine is
what link data is actually needed to maintain the thread linkages.

>I'm not quite sure what you want to know, so please forgive me if
>I completely fail to answer your question.  I think the best place
>to start is trn's internal data structures. 

Thanks; I had seen the data structure definitions, but they beg the
question `how much of this complexity is really needed?'.  For example,
what use is a sibling pointer, given parent and children pointers?
Surely one's siblings are one's parent's children.

Given a database that permits quick (dbm-style) lookups by message-id
or article file name, and that contains at least Message-Id: and
trn do everything it currently does?  (I'm assuming that spending a
little time assembling linkages in core upon group entry is
acceptable.)
-- 
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
Subject: Re: Help transmitting articles with Cnews (please : )
From: warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy)
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 16:14:05 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico

In article <66569@hydra.gatech.EDU> Noah White writes:

-->    I am have a lot of difficulty transmitting articles back up stream ...
-->  The articles that get posted on our system are not going back to our feed.
-->  ... I think it may be a problem with my sys file as I am not completly
-->  sure of it's syntax. ...
-->  
-->  gatech/gatech:to,comp,git/usa,world,git,ga:f:gatch/togo

  Ok, lets interpret.  Gatech won't be getting anything that came through it,
good and important for a leaf when you don't want to use the 'L' (local) flag.
I'd use "to.gatech" rather than "to", and usually have mine scrunched up so
they look like:

	gatech/gatech:git,comp,!to,to.gatech/usa,world,git,ga:f:gatch/togo

  Don't know if that will make a difference in your case, but I end up with
monster-long lists of groups for my leafs, and it's a real pain to forget
something in the middle of it and not have it work, so I try to leave the
vital bits at the end where they won't get accidentally wounded.

  The 'f' flag is good for non-NNTP batching (I use the 'F' flag for NNTP).
The "gatech/togo" location is probably your problem, if anything.  If *I*
were to batch something up for NNTP to gatech, I would use the following
directory: 

	/usr/spool/news/batch/gatech

  With my setup, I want to know the fool hostname for gatech, so assuming
it was foo.bar.baz, I'd end up with:

	/usr/spool/news/batch/gatech.foo.bar.baz

  If you don't have this in the correct place, your NNTP software will do
nothing because it'll think there is nothing to transmit.  Make sure it's
being placed where NNTP expects it.

  Similar thing for UUCP-based transports.

	/usr/spool/news/out.going/gatech/togo

  Check out the directory, and make sure the articles are being put in the
file that you want transmitted.

-- 
John Kennedy/KC6RCK/warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu  "IBM, You BM, We All BM for IBM!"
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.sysadmin,comp.unix.sysv386
From: steve@nuchat.sccsi.com (Steve Nuchia)
Subject: Re: Need Cnews 'spacefor' for Dell SVR4
Organization: South Coast Computing Services, Inc.  Houston
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 22:45:34 GMT

In article <tkevans.714832781@eplrx7.es.dupont.com> tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com writes:
>Would someone please e-mail me a Cnews 'spacefor' script that works
>under Dell SVR4?  Thanks.

I've been using one based on a derivitive of the BSD statfs
command.  My spacefor script is below.  The source for the
key dostatfs command was lost due to an undiagnosed fault
in a tape driver, but it is a nearly-trivial hack that calls
the statvfs system call and computes an answer based on
the space targets given.

If somebody duplicates the command before I'm forced to
do it, I'd like to have a copy  (he said sheepishly).

#! /bin/sh
# spacefor - determine available disk space
# About how many things of $1 bytes will fit in the available space for
# stuff of type $2 ("incoming", "articles", "control", "outbound $3",
# or "archive") without cramping things too badly?
#
# You'll have to change this -- your blocksize and minimum-free-desired 
# amounts will probably differ, and you may need to name filesystems
# explicitly.  Note that all amounts are expressed in
# target-filesystem blocks, not some arbitrary absolute unit.  (Absolute
# units might be better but there is no agreement on what they should be.)

# =()<. ${NEWSCONFIG-@<NEWSCONFIG>@}>()=
. ${NEWSCONFIG-/var/news/bin/config}

PATH=$NEWSCTL/bin:$NEWSBIN:$NEWSPATH ; export PATH
umask $NEWSUMASK

canonblksz=512                # canonical block size, passed to dostatfs
# file to look at, free blocks desired, and free inodes desired
case "$2" in
incoming)	arg="$NEWSARTS/in.coming" ; blocks=2000 ; inodes=2000	;;
articles)	arg="$NEWSARTS" ; blocks=2000 ; inodes=2000		;;
control)	arg="$NEWSCTL" ; blocks=1000 ; inodes=200		;;
outbound)	arg="/usr/spool/uucp" ; blocks=10000 ; inodes=2000	;;
archive)	arg="/files/oldnews" ; blocks=4000 ; inodes=1000	;;
*)		echo "$0: bad type argument \`$2'!!" >&2
		exit 2 ;;
esac

ANS="`dostatfs $1 $arg $blocks $inodes $canonblksz`"
# echo $1 $arg $blocks $inodes $canonblksz "->" $ANS >> /var/news/spacelog
echo $ANS
-- 
Steve Nuchia      South Coast Computing Services, Inc.      (713) 661-3301
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: sean@priam.mni.mcgill.ca (Sean MARRETT)
Subject: INN on an SGI / No socket failure
Reply-To: sean@pet.mni.mcgill.ca (Sean MARRETT)
Organization: Positron Imaging Labs, Montreal Neurological Institute
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 18:36:19 GMT

We have a network of SGI /4D35 and /4D25 systems, running irix 4.0.4.
After installing INN (from ftp.uu.net), any attempt to 
post a message fails (inside xrn) with this diagnostic:

NNTP Serious Error: 441 Can't send connect request to server, Socket operation on non-socket


Also, listing the newsgroups from within xrn lists *no* newsgroups -
in fact the .newsrc file is truncated to zero length after xrn exits.

If we try to use ctlinnd (on the host running innd)
then it also fails:

ctlinnd mode
Can't send "mode" command, Socket operation on non-socket.

All of the directions in the installation guide have been followed
(as best we could). 
The error in ctlinnd is presumably coming from  a failure in ICCOpen. I'm in
the dark as to what to do next, though.



1) For testing purposes, our software is installed in a scratch partition
(ie /usr --> /scratch/usr). This seems okay, though.
2) This is meant to be a purely *local* news server (we use another machine
on campus for providing us with Usenet access).


Any advice on this problem would be appreciated. As a more general question,
is there any *standard* way to  allow local newsgroups and use a remote
server for general Usenet news ?.

I will summarize to the net if there is sufficent interest. Thanks.
Sean
--------------------------------------------------------
Sean Marrett                     email: sean@pet.mni.mcgill.ca 
wb213, PET Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute.
3801 University St., Montreal, Quebec.	H3A 2B4 
                                 tel:(514)-398-1537,1996 Fax: 8948 
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: relaynews vs the "threaded" newsreaders
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:18:32 GMT

Having written a thread builder and drawer once myself, my feeling is that
there is no need for two databases.   A regular database, with the references
line is enough.

With an appropriate hashing algorithm, building the trees from the references
lines, once you have them in ram, is not that hard, and while it is a waste
in a sense to calculate them each time, it is not a killer.

The hard part is getting all those headers and references lines into ram.
That's the function a database serves -- saving you 100 file opens.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: rmail -U locks my sys file!
From: tim@qed.cts.com (Tim Capps)
Date: 3 Sep 92 03:45:22 GMT
Organization: The QED BBS, Lakewood CA

Help!

I am running b-news under Xenix 2.3.3

I have found that when I run multiple Ihave/sendme feeds, the system can
sometimes get a bit behind.  When that happens, news gets spooled to
/usr/spool/news/.rnews.  At some point, the system executes rnews -U to
unpack this spooled news.  It appears that I'm seeing the results of
a deadly embrace at this point.  If the system isn't idle when rnews -U is
fired off (it is unpacking news, or making batches or whatever), then the
/usr/news/sys file gets locked, and no more news action happens until
I "kill -9" the rnews -U job.  Sometimes I don't notice that this has happened
for quite a while, and things back up horribly.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?  Is there a fix or workaround?

Please e-mail, as my news unpacker is not to be trusted at this point. :-(

Thanks,
Tim

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Capps     | tim@qed.cts.com  or qed!tim  |  Public access usenet/email: 
QED Software  | The QED BBS (310)420-9327    |  give The QED BBS a call!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: Ross Ridge <ross@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Re: relaynews vs the "threaded" newsreaders
Organization: ZOOiD BBS
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 08:04:44 GMT

gdonl@sunrise.ssi1.com (Don Lewis) writes:
>A deficiency relative to mthreads is that mthreads can dig around in
>the article body for references if it notices that the Subject begins
>with "Re: " and it doesn't find a References: header, while my hack
>does not have this ability.

ross@zooid.guild.org (Ross Ridge) writes:
>I don't know how much of deficiency it is, this heuristic seems
>to lose as much as it wins.

gdonl@sunrise.ssi1.com (Don Lewis) writes:
>It allows the articles in comp.dcom.telecom to be threaded, since
>none of them have References: headers.  Without it, the articles are
>only grouped by subject, making it more difficult to follow a discussion.
>It's a really ugly hack though.  It would be much better if the
>References: header were preserved,

Well you can try asking your moderator to do that. 

>(and if inews verified that this header had not been corrupted before
>posting the article).

Interestingly, our mailer will do that.  Only works for moderated
groups though.

							Ross Ridge

-- 
Ross Ridge - The Great HTMU					     l/	 //
								    [OO][oo]
ross@zooid.guild.org						    /()\/()/
uunet.ca!zooid!ross						     db	 //
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com (Alan Edmonds)
Subject: Re: Help transmitting articles with Cnews (please :)
Organization: Texas Instruments, Inc. - Plano, Tx
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 22:17:29 GMT

In article <BtLx55.LA6@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <BtJqJF.9Eq@ernest.dseg.ti.com> alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com (Alan Edmonds) writes:
>>I could be an idiot, but shouldn't you use the 'n' flag instead of
>>the 'F' flag?  The 'n' flag puts the article pathas and message id 
>>in the togo file, saving a lot of article look ups for message ids.
>
>Generally better, assuming your NNTP software can cope.  I think the
>modern releases can, but haven't checked carefully.

I should add that I am running NNTP 1.5.11, and that the 'n' flag works
(quite well) for me.

-- 
Alan Edmonds                                     Texas Instruments, Inc.
I don't speak for TI; TI doesn't speak for me    M/S 8513
Work phone: (214)575-6427                        6620 Chase Oaks Blvd.
Email: alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com                   Plano, Texas  75023
Newsgroups: news.software.b
From: ronald@gate.demon.co.uk (Ronald Khoo)
Organization: Demon Internet Services.
Keywords: cnews sco
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.4 2/2/92)
Subject: Re: Cnews ranlib problem on SCO UNIX 3.2.2
Cc: melpar!rmartin@uunet.uu.net
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 01:02:05 +0000

rmartin@melpar.UUCP (Rich Martin) wrote:

> trying to install cnews (2 May 1992 release) on an SCO UNIX 3.2.2
> ranlib: ../libcnews.a:not an archive

Tell build that your system doesn't use ranlib, because it doesn't.
The ranlib is there only for use in xenix cross development.


-- 
Ronald Khoo <ronald@demon.co.uk> <ronald@ibmpcug.co.uk> <ronald@robobar.co.uk>
BTNet: +44 71 229 7741                    | Brambles are the order of the day.
Xref: sparky news.software.b:2835 news.software.nntp:1056
From: mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer)
Subject: Re: mail2news patch for mailing to multiple newsgroups
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: Amiga Yarn 3.4, 1992/08/12 15:49:52
Keywords: 
Summary: 
Date: 26 Aug 92 10:40:00 PST
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica

In <BtIzrH.1rM@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) wrote:
> In article <BtHtMx.Cz2@uunet.uu.net> tale@ten.uu.net (David C Lawrence) writes:
> >Shame those places don't provide good Subject: headers, but that's
> >another nice imcompatible area among mailers.
> 
> We do plan an overhaul of error-reporting techniques at some point, and
> this is on the list of things to be dealt with (somehow).

We ship the mail sent by news into a <local>.sysadmin group, and have
other arrangements for getting alerts from that. For much of the stuff
from news, this is perfectly acceptable to us. If a news system made
this the standard error-reporting method, you avoid the problems of
having to deal with unknown mail systems.

	<mike


Xref: sparky news.software.b:2853 news.software.readers:1745
From: gdonl@sunrise.ssi1.com (Don Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
Subject: Re: relaynews vs the "threaded" newsreaders
Date: 3 Sep 92 00:48:38 GMT
Organization: Silicon Systems, Nevada City CA

In article <1992Sep1.225029.9003@zooid.guild.org> ross@zooid.guild.org (Ross Ridge) writes:
>gdonl@sunrise.ssi1.com (Don Lewis) writes:
>>A deficiency relative to mthreads is that mthreads can dig around in
>>the article body for references if it notices that the Subject begins
>>with "Re: " and it doesn't find a References: header, while my hack
>>does not have this ability.
>
>I don't know how much of deficiency it is, this heuristic seems
>to lose as much as it wins.

It allows the articles in comp.dcom.telecom to be threaded, since
none of them have References: headers.  Without it, the articles are
only grouped by subject, making it more difficult to follow a discussion.
It's a really ugly hack though.  It would be much better if the
header had not been corrupted before posting the article).
-- 
Don "Truck" Lewis              Phone: +1 916 478-8284   Silicon Systems
Internet: gdonl@ssi1.com       FAX:   +1 916 478-8290   138 New Mohawk Road
UUCP: {uunet,tektronix!gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com}!ssigv!gdonl  Nevada City, CA  95959
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.sysadmin,comp.unix.sysv386
From: tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Tim Evans)
Subject: Need Cnews 'spacefor' for Dell SVR4
Reply-To: tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com
Organization: DuPont Engineering Physics Laboratory
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 12:39:41 GMT

Would someone please e-mail me a Cnews 'spacefor' script that works
under Dell SVR4?  Thanks.
-- 
Tim Evans                     |    E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.
tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com  |    Experimental Station
(302) 695-9353/7395           |    P.O. Box 80357
EVANSTK AT A1 AT ESVAX        |    Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0357
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: cudep@warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson)
Subject: Re: mail2news patch for mailing to multiple newsgroups
Organization: Team Limpid's Meathead With Aptitude - Kunst und Wahnsinn
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 10:10:36 GMT

In article <mwm.1n6n@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us> mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer) writes:
>We ship the mail sent by news into a <local>.sysadmin group, and have
>other arrangements for getting alerts from that. For much of the stuff
>from news, this is perfectly acceptable to us. If a news system made
>this the standard error-reporting method, you avoid the problems of
>having to deal with unknown mail systems.

Which won't work very well if your inews is shafted for some reason,
and you want to see the reports without searching log files.  Mail is good
because it notifies you of problems, rather than you having to look for them.

Cheers,
--
Ian
-- 
\/ato - Ian Dickinson - NIC handle: ID17                   No-one is to molest
vato@csv.warwick.ac.uk  ...!mcsun!uknet!warwick!vato           the wombat when
/I=I/S=Dickinson/OU=CSV/O=Warwick/PRMD=UK.AC/ADMD= /C=GB/            anyone is
@c=GB@o=University of Warwick@ou=Computing Services@cn=Ian Dickinson  watching.
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: Ross Ridge <ross@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Re: relaynews vs the "threaded" newsreaders
Organization: ZOOiD BBS
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 22:50:29 GMT

gdonl@sunrise.ssi1.com (Don Lewis) writes:
>A deficiency relative to mthreads is that mthreads can dig around in
>the article body for references if it notices that the Subject begins
>with "Re: " and it doesn't find a References: header, while my hack
>does not have this ability.

I don't know how much of deficiency it is, this heuristic seems
to lose as much as it wins.

							Ross Ridge

-- 
Ross Ridge - The Great HTMU					     l/	 //
								    [OO][oo]
ross@zooid.guild.org						    /()\/()/
uunet.ca!zooid!ross						     db	 //
From: alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com (Alan Edmonds)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Help transmitting articles with Cnews (please :)
Date: 25 Aug 92 15:47:39 GMT
Organization: Texas Instruments, Inc. - Plano, Tx

In article <66775@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt5870c@prism.gatech.EDU (Noah White) writes:
>>Two or three things wrong here...  For one thing, for NNTP you want to use
>>the F flag, not f, because nntpsend does not like the extra information
>>that f puts in.  For another, nntpsend looks for the files in (as I recall)
>>/usr/spool/news/batch/<site>, not /usr/spool/news/out.going/<site>/togo.
>>For a third, you'll need to use the full Internet host name.
>
>  Ok I changed it to this:
>gatech.edu/gatech.edu:git,to.gatech/git:F:mephisto.gatech.edu/togo

I could be an idiot, but shouldn't you use the 'n' flag instead of
the 'F' flag?  The 'n' flag puts the article pathas and message id 
in the togo file, saving a lot of article look ups for message ids.

-- 
Alan Edmonds                                     Texas Instruments, Inc.
I don't speak for TI; TI doesn't speak for me    M/S 8513
Work phone: (214)575-6427                        6620 Chase Oaks Blvd.
Email: alan@ernest.dseg.ti.com                   Plano, Texas  75023
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.software.nntp
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Announcing the release of InterNetNews
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 01:19:26 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1992Aug21.141713.8635@drd.com> mark@drd.com (Resident.Alien) writes:
>We currently have a year-old or so installation of C-News running
>as our news transport and are connected wholly via UUCP links.  Would
>there be any reason at all for a site like us to transit to INN? ...

If memory serves, at Usenix r$'s comment was "if you don't have at least
one NNTP feed over a fast link, stick with C News".  I'd assume that was
meant as a general guideline rather than an absolute rule.

>... Are C-News and INN mutually exclusive...

Basically, yes.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: larry@gator.rn.com (Larry Snyder)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: performance release of C-news with SVR4
Date: 25 Aug 92 19:20:46 GMT
Organization: The Gator Public Access Unix Site - 219-289-3745

I am running the performance release of C-News under SVR4 4.0

I modified the queuelen script to work with my uucp grading 
(just like I did in previous releases of C-news).

My queuelen parameter in the batchparm file is ignored and bundles
are batched regardless of the number of bundles in the queue for
a given site.

Has anyone else had this problem?  Any pointers on things to check?

-- 
Larry Snyder                                    internet: larry@gator.rn.com
keeper of the Gator                                  uucp: uunet!gator!larry
Xref: sparky news.software.b:2862 news.software.readers:1753