[net.news.b] Having a hard time getting netnews out

rjnoe@riccb.UUCP (Roger J. Noe ) (08/01/85)

We haven't been able to get outgoing netnews articles accepted by a
neighbor site of ours for a LONG time.  This one is going out through
a backbone site (ihnp4) which we don't like to use as a matter of habit
because it takes so long to establish communications (because of heavy
load there).  But it's better than getting no articles out at all.
I am entertaining suggestions and speculations from all readers of these
newsgroups addressing the areas of what may be the problems we are
encountering, what kind of tests can I conduct to positively diagnose
the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.  Any help at
all is appreciated.

Firstly, we (riccb) are a VAX running UNIX 5.2 and netnews version B,
2.10.2 (dated 9/5/84).  Our neighbor machine is a Bell Labs site which
runs a slightly modified version of netnews called exptools.  They (and
about 100 other machines located nearby) all receive/transmit netnews
articles from/to ihnp4, although NOT usually (if ever) via uucp.  They
have a separate, higher-speed communications network for that purpose.
Our neighbor machine apparently has no problems exchanging netnews with
ihnp4 and we have no problems receiving netnews from them.  If you are
reading this, then we have no problems sending netnews out through ihnp4.
The only thing we cannot do (and we wish to) is get our neighbor to accept
articles posted from here.  We always get an error message mailed back to
us from their uucp indicating "uuxqt cmd (rnews ) status (exit 1, signal
0)".  This says to me that the uux we start up is in fact getting their
uucico to start rnews, but it fails with an exit(1).  I have examined the
source for rnews in 2.10.2 and it looks to me that there are quite a few
things that could go wrong.  What I wish to know is how to go about pinning
them down.

It really doesn't look like a uux or uucp problem to me.  We have no
problems with mail at all.  Either our articles aren't being set up right
or something on the other machine is configured wrong for receiving net-
news from anyone other than ihnp4.  If this gets to ihnp4, that pretty
much indicates the latter.  What kind of things could be wrong?  How do
I test these theories and get the problem corrected?

Thanks for all the help I can get.
--
Roger Noe			ihnp4!riccb!rjnoe
Rockwell International