[net.news.b] rn problem

lindsay@cheviot.UUCP (Lindsay F. Marshall) (01/09/85)

<>
I have two problems with rn, any suggestions for their solution would be
most welcome (mail please) :

1) When trying to run rn as root with HOME at /, the program will not even
initialise. It prints out errors that look like they come from termcap and
stops. 

2) When running as myself in my home directory, rn either locks up solid
and I have to quit, or else it gets a SIGBUS just as I am about to leave
the program. This does not happen to anyone else.

I can see no obvious reasons for either of the above so...
HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

Lindsay F. Marshall - Computing Lab., U of Newcastle upon Tyne
  ARPA : lindsay%cheviot%newcastle.mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
  UUCP : <UK>!ukc!cheviot!lindsay

[How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?]

dsp@ptsfa.UUCP (Dave St.Pierre) (07/23/86)

This problem has been around ever since rn has but it may be much more
important with this wholesale renaming of newsgroups coming up ...

rn and inews seem to be in conflict as to what should be in a
well-formed newgroup. inews updates the active file but doesn't
run the mkdir until the first article arrives. rn announces

"No mod.mac.binaries!"

and for all intents and purposes ignores that newsgroup until you
later "manually" add it to your .newsrc (like with the 'g' command).

This has been a tolerable situation in the past but with 150 or so
newgroups about to flood the net, and not all of them having an article
tagged with it, we're going to have a few unhappy rn readers.

Rick feels that it's rn's problem. Larry may or may not disagree.
The fix was rather trivial to inews (call mknewsg in c_newgroup)
and may be equally easy in rn. Can one of the two come up with an
"official" fix?
-- 
David St. Pierre	415/823-6800	{ihnp4,lll-crg,qantel,pyramid}!ptsfa!dsp