HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: danmz@echosphere.com (Dan Zirin)
Newsgroups: news.newsites
Subject: Newsite map file for raptor
Date: 6 Jan 93 12:06:25 MST
Organization: Echosphere/Houston Tracker Systems

#N	raptor, .echosphere.com
#F	csn.org
#S	DEC VAX4000-500; VMS V5.5-1
#O	Echosphere Corp./Houston Tracker Systems
#C	Dan Zirin
#E	raptor!danmz
#T	+1 303 799 8222
#P	90 Inverness Circle East, Englewood, CO 80112, USA
#L	39 38 N / 104 59 W city
#R	Running DECUS uucp V2.0 (send mail for details)
#U	csn
#W	raptor!danmz (Dan Zirin); Tue Oct 20 12:00:00 MDT 1992
#
raptor	.echosphere.com
raptor = echosphere.com
raptor = raptor.echosphere.com
raptor	.hts.com
raptor = hts.com
raptor = raptor.hts.com
#
raptor	csn(POLLED)
Xref: sparky news.admin:8795 news.sysadmin:1589 news.answers:5005 news.lists:562
From: ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.future,news.groups,news.misc,news.software.readers
Subject: FAQ's and how to get people to read them
Date: 12 Jan 1993 11:29:09 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Reply-To: ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
NNTP-Posting-Host: fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

On some of my favourite newsgroups (can anyone say comp.os.linux?), the
signal/noise ratio is pretty bad.  Much of the noise comes from people
who have not RTFAQ.

The creation of news.answers with its ftp archive has helped a lot, but
a certain level of expertise is needed to access them.  The
news.announce.newusers articles provide useful pointers, but not enough
people read them.

So, is there a technical possiblity of making sure that people know that
FAQ's exist?  Maybe checking for the existence of an FAQ in the newsgroup
(by looking for the crossposting to news.answers) and asking them

"There is a list of frequently asked questions with answers for the
newsgroup you are about to post to.  Do you want to view it before
posting?  [yn]"

would do the trick...
-- 
Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram.
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: Bryan_Cardoza@Novell.COM (Bryan Cardoza)
Subject: Feed for biz hierarchy?
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Novell, Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:16:01 GMT

Where can I get an NNTP feed for the biz.* groups?

-- 
Bryan Cardoza                        Internet:  Bryan_Cardoza@Novell.COM
NetWare Systems Group             NetWare MHS:  BRYAN@NOVELL
Novell, Inc.                            Voice:  +1-801-568-8653
Sandy, UT                                 FAX:  +1-801-568-8866
From: rick@ricksys.lonestar.org (Richard McCombs KB5SNF)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Why haven't news.admin, and news.sysadmin died yet?
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 23:12:14 CST
Organization: The Red Headed League; Lawton, Ok
X-Newsreader: rusnews v0.97

It seems that even a few "important net personalities" like Brian Reid
for some reason didn't notice that news.admin was spilt into
news.admin.misc and news.admin.policy, and news.sysadmin has been
replaced with news.admin.technical.

How long will it take for "everyone" to get the message?

13-Nov-92 00:49 < net >    | rmgroup news.sysadmin
20-Nov-92 21:59 < net >    | rmgroup news.admin

-- 
Internet: rick@ricksys.lonestar.org
If I bounce (the maps have errors that I have no control over) then use
bo836@cleveland.freenet.edu
BITNET: bo836%cleveland.freenet.edu@cunyvm
From: Michael S. Shappe <mss1@cornell.edu>
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: INN error message I don't understand
Date: 12 Jan 1993 20:25:32 GMT
Organization: Cornell University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: uncle-mikey.cit.cornell.edu
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d16
X-XXMessage-ID: <A778940ED90145AD@uncle-mikey.cit.cornell.edu>
X-XXDate: Tue, 12 Jan 93 19:28:14 GMT

In article <1isho3INN1mb@rodan.UU.NET> Rich Salz, rsalz@rodan.UU.NET
writes:
> Most people believe that it is best to have the spool directory be a
local
> filesystem on the same host where innd or relaynews resides.  They
believe
> this to be even more true of the lib directory.  Nobody can directly
point
> fingers at NFS bugs or (mis-)features that cause problems, but
experienced
> sys admins are generally very paranoid about doing this.  Just a data
point.

From my own standpoint, I cannot, as you say, point to anything specific
about NFS that would make me consider it a Bad Idea. It's mostly just a
general impression of NFS' brittleness that makes me unwilling to put
upon either the protocol or my network the sort of load that News would
generate for it.../mss1
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: What new innovation, software or products do you want to see?
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 15:57:57 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.041931.19393@yarra-glen.aaii.oz.au> anthony@yarra-glen.aaii.oz.au (Anthony Baxter) writes:
>In <sehari.726179763@du139-210.cc.iastate.edu> (and lots of other messages), 
>Babak Sehari writes:
>> What type of new innovation, software or products do you want to be
>> introduced to the market place.  No answer is stupid.  The things
>> that might be unachievable to you, might be very easy to produce
>> by others.  You could become part of history by initiating the process of
>> innovation.

>And you could join the net's folklore... individually posting this to _each_
>newsgroup? I'm sure the readers of USENET really, really love to see lots
>and lots of copies of this lovely prose. You're not related to Serdar Argic,
>are you?

>> [ deleted ]

>>P.S.  This message is being automatically posted to all unix wide bbs'. 
>>This post does not mean that I approve or disapprove this newsgroup.  Also,
>>the moderator of the moderated newsgroups, such as rec.humor.funny, should 
>>decide if they want this posting in their newsgroup.

>I suppose we should be grateful he was too clueless to know how to post to
>moderated newsgroups.

>I would like to nominate Mr Sehari to test Karl's USENet Death
>Penalty :-)

I second that.  So far there have been postings to 173 newsgroups at
this site.   At 1.5k each thats 250k down the drain.   Multiply that by
the 67000 (approx) sites around the world and it starts to add up to a
real waste.  


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.oau.org  bill@bilver.uucp
                - ..!{peora|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill
From: betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: What's wrong with rec,soc, etc distribut
Date: 11 Jan 93 22:45:46 GMT
	<1in1gpINN9bm@early-bird.think.com>
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Boston

I usually will limit the distribution on easy questions to "na" and
sometimes on really easy questions to "ne." If I'm asking something so
simple that I figure the whole world knows the answer, or it should be
a FAQ, I don't need to ask 1.6 million sites! 
  Of course, posting to New England (or is it North East <grin> don't
answer that!) gets a good chunk of Rte 128 expertise. A person out in
the wilderness somewhere might need to ask a wider area.
--
System Administrator                  Internet: betsys@cs.umb.edu
MACS Dept, UMass/Boston               Phone   : 617-287-6448
100 Morrissey Blvd                    Staccato signals
Boston, MA 02125-3393                      of constant information....
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills)
Subject: backups on the news partition
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 04:34:34 GMT

I'm wondering how other news admins do backups on the news partitions?
We do a level zero every night on the live system.  One concern I have
is that the backup slows down news processing so that a backlog of
incoming batches develops.  This can get really bad if expire is running
at the same time as the backup, but we try to avoid this situation.
Does anyone have a better way?  The main purpose of the backup is to
restore the entire partition in the event of a hardware failure.

-- 
-Gary Mills-         -Networking Group-          -U of M Computer Services-
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: What's wrong with rec,soc, etc distribution?
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 08:15:26 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <BETSYS.93Jan7152208@ra.cs.umb.edu> betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz) writes:
>could some enlightened person please post a summary of what's wrong
>with these distributions (rec,soc,news) etc...

What do you think they accomplish?

Although there has historically been considerable confusion about
distributions, one thing is clear:  they are meant to *restrict*
the propagation of an article, to a smaller set of hosts than
those who would get it if the decision were based on newsgroups
alone.  The whole point of putting a distribution on an article is
that it is *different* from the newsgroup(s).

In general, a meaningful distribution name corresponds to some sort
of region of propagation -- a geographical area or an organization.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
From: betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: What's wrong with rec,soc, etc distribution?
Date: 7 Jan 93 20:22:08 GMT
Distribution: news
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Boston

could some enlightened person please post a summary of what's wrong
with these distributions (rec,soc,news) etc , or point me to a FAQ 
or RFC?
thanks, Betsy
--
System Administrator                  Internet: betsys@cs.umb.edu
MACS Dept, UMass/Boston               Phone   : 617-287-6448
100 Morrissey Blvd                    Staccato signals
Boston, MA 02125-3393                      of constant information....
From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: What son-of-rfc-1036 should say about "Distribution: "
Date: 9 Jan 1993 18:47:20 -0500
Organization: The Programmers' Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI
NNTP-Posting-Host: mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us

In article <1993Jan09.070632.20329@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>Dynafeed already works that way, and of course it does not support
>the most accursed "all" distribution.

Unfortunately Dynafeed has its own problems.  Like being difficult to
configure.  Like being difficult to install.  Like being buggy.

I tried using Dynafeed for several months.  I eventually gave up on it
because it was regularly taking the "control" group out of the newsrc
file, despite insertions of ": control" in several different config
files.  I am currently working on a replacement that rewrites the
site's newsfeeds file entry, instead of trying to do the news feeding
itself.

-- 
Marc Unangst, N8VRH         | "Of course, in order to understand this you
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   |  have to remember that the nucleus of the atom
                            |  is squishy."
                            |    -W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture
From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: What son-of-rfc-1036 should say about "Distribution: "
Date: 10 Jan 1993 14:33:24 -0500
Organization: The Programmers' Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI
NNTP-Posting-Host: mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us

In article <1993Jan10.043441.1964@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I never got this problem -- do you have any info on how to duplicate it?

Not exact sequences, since I stopped using dynafeed a while ago.  As I
recall, despite putting ": control" in the per-site and system control
files, the "control" newsgroup would get removed from the site's
newsrc file when the next update was received.

Dynafeed also had locking and updating problems -- it seemed to assume
that only one set of changes would be pending at once, and so it
didn't bother to lock the new newsrc file or anything like that.  Made
things real interesting when I connected to a site for the first time
in a couple days, and got three newsrc updates.

-- 
Marc Unangst, N8VRH         | "Of course, in order to understand this you
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   |  have to remember that the nucleus of the atom
                            |  is squishy."
                            |    -W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: What's wrong with rec,soc, etc distribut
Date: 9 Jan 1993 17:20:25 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.think.com

In article <1im5tcINN5qc@flash.pax.tpa.com.au> dclunie@pax.tpa.com.au writes:
>This sounds like a terrible idea to me. Living outside the na/usa area where
>most news comes from, I want to read all this stuff in rec,soc,comp, etc and
>I don't care who the poster is or where he/she comes from, their words are just
>as important to me !

So what's the problem?  Distributions specify where you want messages to go
*to*, not where they come from.  If you want to see messages that are only
intended to go to the USA, you'll probably have to find a feed in the USA,
or someone local who also wants that stuff.  But why should all the
newsfeeds in the world have to receive it just in case a few leaf sites want
it?

>Let's face it ... everyone in the world is going to have to get the na and usa
>distributions to stay in touch

I think most news has "world" distribution (it's the default in our
configuration), so why is this?  Why would posters put usa or na
distributions on general interest postings?

Until I fixed the distribution filter at our site, I was seeing
announcements of seminars 3000 miles away in comp.misc, and requests for
videotape loans all over the place in rec.arts.tv.  These are the kinds of
posts for which geographic distributions are appropriate.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain)
Subject: Re: What son-of-rfc-1036 should say about "Distribution: "
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 12:20:27 GMT
Organization: D'Arcy Cain Consulting

mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) writes:
>I tried using Dynafeed for several months.  I eventually gave up on it
>because it was regularly taking the "control" group out of the newsrc
>file, despite insertions of ": control" in several different config
>files.  I am currently working on a replacement that rewrites the
>site's newsfeeds file entry, instead of trying to do the news feeding
>itself.

This is exactly the idea behind my gensys program.  It creates a sys file
based on requests received from the sites you feed appended to a hand
crafted portion for full feeds and special cases.  It also sends your
request to your feed site based on the requests you have received, the
newsgroups actually read on your system and a list you wish to receive
whether any site or user requested them or not (i.e. maps.)  This list
is trimmed by a list of groups not to request due to local policies.  I
use it here with one site feeding me using it and a redundant feed not
using it.  All the sites I feed (including one Waffle site) use gensys to
customize their sys file entry either automatically by running gensys
themselves or by manually sending a uux command to my system.  Note that
the Waffle site is one of the automatic ones.  I find it works quite well
and keeps my modem time to a minimum without constant hand crafting of the
sys file.

You should be able to find this in a comp.sources.misc archive.  Volume
21 I believe.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid.com)  |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting              |   There's no government
Toronto, Ontario, Canada            |   like no government!
+1 416 424 2871          DoD#0082   |
Xref: sparky news.admin.misc:1077 news.misc:2128 news.answers:5140
From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.misc,news.answers
Subject: Changes to How to Get Information about Networks
Supersedes: <spaf-c_networks_726769989@cs.purdue.edu>
Followup-To: news.misc
Date: 11 Jan 1993 11:55:54 -0500
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Expires: 13 Mar 93 04:55:54 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: ector.cs.purdue.edu

Archive-name: network-info/diff1
Last-change: 5 May 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)


*** old/networks.n	Mon Jan 11 11:43:23 1993
--- ./src/networks.n	Mon Jan 11 11:45:01 1993
***************
*** 2,4 ****
  Reply-to: randall@uvaarpa.virginia.edu
! Followup-to: news.admin
  
--- 2,4 ----
  Reply-to: randall@uvaarpa.virginia.edu
! Followup-to: news.admin.misc
  
-- 
Gene Spafford
Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences
Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398
Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu	phone:  (317) 494-7825
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,phl.misc
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Paths with domains
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 17:44:19 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <721@rescon.UUCP> bud@rescon.UUCP (Alex Batyi) writes:
>... Please nobody tell me to go get Cnews?  Please?
>
>I just noticed news unbatching from king.mcs.drexel.edu.  "king" to
>our little Xenix386 box.  Then I noticed all the news spooled up
>to go to king.  Nobody but king is sending us this much news right
>now.  That made me sit up.  Not much could at this hour.  Ok, no
>biggie.  Bnews thinks news is coming in from king.mcs.drexel.edu not
>king.  Why am I nervous?  Why?  Because the more I think about it
>the more it seems like we got a problem...

I'm afraid you do.  And I'm afraid the answer is probably going to be
the one you asked people not to tell you...  I don't think B News ever
did get the feature needed to cope with this right (although I lost track
of B News changes around 2.11 and may have missed it).

In C News, your sys file entry would start "king/king.mcs.drexel.edu:"
instead of just "king:", to say "his name is king, but by the way, don't
send him anything that seems to have passed through king.mcs.drexel.edu".
Try it, maybe it'll work...

Alternatively, you could list him as king.mcs.drexel.edu in the sys file
but specify an explicit file name (i.e. don't leave the last field empty)
to direct output to a file named .../king instead of .../k.m.d.e.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
From: per@erix.ericsson.se (Per Hedeland)
Subject: Re: Paths with domains
Nntp-Posting-User: per
Organization: Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 22:29:24 GMT

In article <4113@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
>In article <C0JqLz.MAC@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>|I'm afraid you do.  And I'm afraid the answer is probably going to be
>|the one you asked people not to tell you...  I don't think B News ever
>|did get the feature needed to cope with this right (although I lost track
>|of B News changes around 2.11 and may have missed it).
>
>Not quite, but close.  B news can handle it.
>
>|In C News, your sys file entry would start "king/king.mcs.drexel.edu:"
>|instead of just "king:", to say "his name is king, but by the way, don't
>|send him anything that seems to have passed through king.mcs.drexel.edu".
>|Try it, maybe it'll work...
>
>The above won't work in B news.  B news never understood "/" in site or
>newsgroup fields.

Not that I want to recommend sticking with B news, but in all fairness
it should be pointed out that it did indeed do the "/" thing in the site
field, at least as of the initial release of 2.11 (~ 1986), and probably
earlier... - guess it was just "amazing coincendence" that both B and C
came up with the same syntax for it:-).

--Per Hedeland
per@erix.ericsson.se  or
per%erix.ericsson.se@sunic.sunet.se  or
...uunet!erix.ericsson.se!per
From: tgll@datasci.co.uk (Tim Lyons)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Usenet News via Satellite
Date: 7 Jan 93 14:06:20 GMT
Reply-To: tgll@datasci.co.uk (Tim Lyons)
Organization: Data Sciences, Farnborough, Hampshire, UK

Could you tell us the footprint of your satelite? Is your offer any good
outside mainland USA?

(Yes, I noticed that you had set a distribution of usa, but I got it,
even though I am in UK [and even though may reading of the relevant sys
files implies I shouldn't]).

Tim Lyons
Data Sciences(UK) Ltd, Hampshire UK
From: s19184@seb.se (Michael Evans)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Add where you are to .sig file
Date: 11 Jan 93 21:41:41 GMT
 <377@apdnmi.idca.tds.philips.nl> <C0EBy4.3v7@vuse.vanderbilt.edu> <813@ulogic.UUCP> <9301071945.AA21253@sap-ag.de>
Organization: S-E-Banken, Sweden
Nntp-Posting-User: s19184

In article <9301071945.AA21253@sap-ag.de>, wohler@hw1175.sap-ag.de (Bill Wohler) writes:
>     It is also suggested to include the city, state, province, and
>     country for the benefit of those in other countries.
> 
>   in defense of the person who said "Why?" and got flamed, in most
>   cases, the .signature information is redundant (in from, reply-to or
>   organization headers) or useless and as such should be reduced, not
>   fattened.

I don't think this has been mentioned before. If it has, please excuse 
me.

There can easily be a difference between "location/culture of
organisation" and "location/culture of writer".

My company is a case in point: our interconnection between the 
Internet and our internal network is in Sweden. Therefore, 
Organisation in the header says (I hope) "S-E-Banken, Sweden".

When we get all the problems sorted out, the author of a note could 
just as easily be sitting in Tokyo, New York or London, but the tests 
will still be reaching the Internet via the Stockholm gateway.

I know that the Ericsson telephone company already has this situation: 
Their Texas people are attached to the Internet via the Stockholm 
gateway.

Therefore I submit that the signature has a valid place in informaing 
about a writer's background.

-- 
Michael Evans    Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (S-E-Banken)
SEB Data R                   Telephone: +46-8-639 33 70
S-106 40  Stockholm                Fax: +46-8-639 37 62
Sweden                        Internet: mike@seb.se
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc