From: erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp)
Subject: Re: uucp/mail/news FAQ
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:38:20 GMT

Vince Skahan (vince@halcyon.com) wrote:

: you're not supposed to do this stuff if you're clueless.
: USENET is not for kiddies.

YES!!!!!  Thanks for reiterating this, Vince!

: But you already get HDB if you run Ed Carp's mailpak, which uses the
: HDB configuration.  You don't have to do anything...it's done for you.
: [...Ed, do I get a royalty every time I tell somebody you did good?...]

Sure, Vince - if anyone ever sends me any money, I'll give you a cut... :)

: Care and feeding of smail is a reasonably non-issue if you grab the
: smail3.1.28 I provide as part of 'newspak'.  I have about 4 lines of
: total configuration files to set system-specific stuff.  The incredible
: things you *could* do with smail are well-documented in the smail docs
: and in the comp.mail.smail newsgroup. I asked a question via email to
: Steve Robbins who provided excellent info that I included when I uploaded
: newspak (in the smail stuff).

I set up smail 3.1.28 in about an hour - time well spent reading the docs that
came with it.  I groan every time I see someone post a question that is
covered in the documentation... :(

I can understand someone posting "what does mailpak/newspak/X/<whatever> do
for me?" before they download it - these packages take time and space to
download.  I can't understand someone posting "I just downloaded mailpak -
*now* what do I do?"  There's a README, and simple instructions on how to
get it going.  For those who want to delve further in the inner workings of
elm, uucp, or smail, I include all the docs that I received with the respective
packages, and I'm sure Vince does the same.

: there IS NO system-specific stuff to be done any more.
: Grab newspak.  Grab mailpak.  Grab vixcron.  type make.  Miller Time.

How true!  Thanks to Linux and H.J. and all the other folks that have donated
their time and effort (and $$$, for some - SVGA cards and monitors and SCSI
cards and drives aren't cheap!), Linux has turned into a system that can give
the best commercial unixes a run for their money, both in terms of performance
and in terms of features!  It's pretty compatible with most unix systems
around - no more 200K+ files to feed to patch. :)

: A person getting started running news gets news/mail fed from
: somewhere.  If they have no clue, and they don't try to get a clue, they
: live with the implications of their lack of action.  Everybody is a 
: beginner once.  Everybody screws up.  No biggie. If a rookie admin 
: doesn't get in touch with his uucp neighbor(s) to help prevent him from
: screwing up BIG deserves what he/she gets.

I've had my hand slapped by fellow sysadmins more than once, too.  Shit
happens, you know.  But if you don't learn from your mistakes, you are bound
to repeat them.  Eventually, you'll piss off all your neighbors, and they'll
cut you off at the knees.  Then, I suppose, they'll be posting about that
evil Ed and Vince and Linus and H. J. who got them in the mess in the first
place. :)
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG          erc@apple.com, erc@saturn.upl.com         801/538-0177
"There is nothing to seek and nothing to find.  You're already enlightened, and
all the words in the world won't give you what you already have.  The wise
seeker, therefore, is concerned with one thing only: to becaome aware of what
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux