[net.news.b] Why can't uucp transfer news articles from where they sit?

dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) (01/25/85)

We're kinda short of disk space, and if we feed news to anyone, then
articles pile up in /usr/spool/uucp waiting to go to that site.
Why shouldn't uucp be able to be told to take the articles from where
they reside in /usr/spool/news? Certain information would have to be
stripped off and replaced by inews upon receipt, of course (Xref,
Date-Received, and so on). Will inews do this correctly anyway?
What problems would such a scheme introduce?
(We're running 2.10.2 on a Perkin-Elmer 3220 under v7.)

Dave Sherman
The Law Society of Upper Canada
-- 
{utzoo pesnta nrcaero utcs}!lsuc!dave
{allegra decvax ihnp4 linus}!utcsrgv!lsuc!dave

spaf@gatech.UUCP (Gene Spafford) (01/27/85)

In article <333@lsuc.UUCP> dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) writes:
>We're kinda short of disk space, and if we feed news to anyone, then
>articles pile up in /usr/spool/uucp waiting to go to that site.
>Why shouldn't uucp be able to be told to take the articles from where
>they reside in /usr/spool/news? Certain information would have to be
>stripped off and replaced by inews upon receipt, of course (Xref,
>Date-Received, and so on). Will inews do this correctly anyway?
>What problems would such a scheme introduce?
>(We're running 2.10.2 on a Perkin-Elmer 3220 under v7.)

Most of the sites in Atlanta do exactly this -- transfer directly from
the news articles themselves.  We use the "xfernews" suite of
programs.  Two of the sites to which gatech feeds news are P-E systems
running 2.10.2 news.  I'm sure there are other systems around the
country doing the same.  We snarfed our copy of the net many moons
ago.

I'll mail a copy of the xfernews software to anyone asking; if I get
more than 5 requests, I'll post it to net.sources instead.
-- 
Gene "6 months and counting" Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet:	Spaf @ GATech		ARPA:	Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp:	...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!spaf

jih@usl.UUCP (Juha I. Heinanen) (01/29/85)

Xrefnews is fine if used on local (free) telephone lines.  On long
distance lines, however, it would be very important to be able to batch
and compress the news.  As fas as I know xrefnews has nothing to support
that.  So xrefnews saves the disk space of our server by increases our
phone bill by at least 50% each month.  Any *real* solutions to the
problem out there?

       Juha Heinanen

USL, P.O. Box 44330, Lafayette, LA 70504-433,  tel. (318)231-5345
UUCP:  {ut-sally, akgua}!usl!jih
ARPA:  usl!jih@ut-sally  CSNet: usl!jih%ut-sally.ARPA@csnet-relay

-- 
Will this be appended?

glc@akgua.UUCP (G.L. Cleveland [Lindsay]) (02/02/85)

>Xrefnews is fine if used on local (free) telephone lines.  On long
>distance lines, however, it would be very important to be able to batch
>and compress the news.  As fas as I know xrefnews has nothing to support
>that.  So xrefnews saves the disk space of our server by increases our
>phone bill by at least 50% each month.  Any *real* solutions to the
>problem out there?

  If you are a server to 14+ sites, it save you a *lot* of disk
space!

  It would seem the "best" solution is to support an in-line
compress/decompress protocol in uucp.  That way, not only would the
news articles be automatically compressed at the time of
transmission, but *all* data transmitted by uucp could be
compressed with no action needed on the part of any user.  

  How about it?  Any hackers out there implemented a "Z" protocol
which perhaps uses the 2.10.2 compress/decompress program?


Cheers,
  Lindsay

Lindsay Cleveland  (...{ihnp4|mcnc|sdcsvax|clyde}!akgua!glc)
AT&T Technologies/Bell Laboratories ... Atlanta, Ga
(404) 447-3909 ...  Cornet 583-3909