mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (06/27/86)
As part of the upcoming Usenet reorganization, the top level newsgroup
class "net" is being split into seven smaller classes: comp, news, sci,
rec, misc, soc, and talk. This split will help system administrators
more easily determine which newsgroups their machines will receive,
and should shorten the newsgroup lists in the sys files. In addition,
the "net" for distribution is being replaced by "world".
In order for this to work, we need you, the netnews administrators, to
make some changes to your sys files. These changes must be made by
July 15, or you may miss some groups as they get renamed. Please make
these changes now, they are fairly easy to make. If all goes well, you
shouldn't have do make any more changes until the old groups are
rmgrouped this fall. (If you're just seeing this for the first time
after July 15, make the changes right away and you probably won't miss
much.)
There are two steps in editing the sys file. This file can usually
be found in /usr/lib/news/sys, although you may have installed it in
a different place locally.
The first step is to find any obsolete keywords in the sys file.
Remove any references to "fa" or "fa.all" or "fa."anything. There
haven't been any fa groups for some time. Now look for ".all".
Whenever you find a name like "net.all" or "mod.all", get rid of
the ".all" part, it isn't buying you anything, and it can mess
up your "Distribution" feature. In vi, for example, you can search
for \.all and do a 4x when you find it.
The second step is to find all the standalone occurrances of "net"
in the file, and change them to read
net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk
You can use a "3snet,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talkESC" command
to do this easily.
If you have explicit groups listed that you do NOT carry, e.g.
net,!net.flame,!net.bizarre
then you shouldn't worry at this time; once the renaming is complete,
you can add or change any new groups you don't want to pass:
net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,!net.flame,!net.bizarre
If you have explicit groups listed that you DO carry, you have a choice
of either carrying all the initial groups (and then trimming down the
list later as you see fit) or watching net.news.group for the list of
group renamings, and carrying the new and old groups explicitly.
For example, if you first carry
mod,net.news,net.mail
you can initially change this to
mod,net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,net.news.net.mail
or to
mod,world,net.news,news,net.mail,comp.mail
Although the latter requires knowing the final list of groups.
(As of this writing, the list is still being worked on.) Another
alternative is, if you know that the groups you want all fall into
a subset of the 8 top level groups, you can select that subset:
mod,world,news,comp
NOTE: You should ALWAYS pass "world" on to everybody. If you are in
North America, you should always pass "na" to everybody. Likewise
for "usa" and more local distributions. These are "distributions",
which are becoming totally separate from "newsgroups". The software
is set up to pass an article only if the sys file says it should pass
BOTH the newsgroup AND the distribution. So a typical sys file entry
should list all the distributions you pass, AND all the newsgroups you pass.
world,na,usa,oh,cmh,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,net
is a typical "we pass everything" entry for Columbus, Ohio. ("net" is
included for upward compatibility; we hope to have all use of "net"
eliminated by October 1986.")
Markmark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (07/21/86)
This is a reposting of a message posted in late June. If your machine
hasn't been converted already, you should do so quickly, or you may
find yourself missing news later because of lack of action now.
As part of the upcoming Usenet reorganization, the top level newsgroup
class "net" is being split into seven smaller classes: comp, news, sci,
rec, misc, soc, and talk. This split will help system administrators
more easily determine which newsgroups their machines will receive,
and should shorten the newsgroup lists in the sys files. In addition,
the "net" for distribution is being replaced by "world".
In order for this to work, we need you, the netnews administrators, to
make some changes to your sys files. These changes must be made by
July 15, or you may miss some groups as they get renamed. Please make
these changes now, they are fairly easy to make. If all goes well, you
shouldn't have do make any more changes until the old groups are
rmgrouped this fall. (If you're just seeing this for the first time
after July 15, make the changes right away and you probably won't miss
much.)
There are two steps in editing the sys file. This file can usually
be found in /usr/lib/news/sys, although you may have installed it in
a different place locally.
The first step is to find any obsolete keywords in the sys file.
Remove any references to "fa" or "fa.all" or "fa."anything. There
haven't been any fa groups for some time. Now look for ".all".
Whenever you find a name like "net.all" or "mod.all", get rid of
the ".all" part, it isn't buying you anything, and it can mess
up your "Distribution" feature. In vi, for example, you can search
for \.all and do a 4x when you find it.
The second step is to find all the standalone occurrances of "net"
in the file, and change them to read
net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk
You can use a "3snet,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talkESC" command
to do this easily.
If you have explicit groups listed that you do NOT carry, e.g.
net,!net.flame,!net.bizarre
then you shouldn't worry at this time; once the renaming is complete,
you can add or change any new groups you don't want to pass:
net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,!net.flame,!net.bizarre
If you have explicit groups listed that you DO carry, you have a choice
of either carrying all the initial groups (and then trimming down the
list later as you see fit) or watching net.news.group for the list of
group renamings, and carrying the new and old groups explicitly.
For example, if you first carry
mod,net.news,net.mail
you can initially change this to
mod,net,world,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,net.news.net.mail
or to
mod,world,net.news,news,net.mail,comp.mail
Although the latter requires knowing the final list of groups.
(As of this writing, the list is still being worked on.) Another
alternative is, if you know that the groups you want all fall into
a subset of the 8 top level groups, you can select that subset:
mod,world,news,comp
NOTE: You should ALWAYS pass "world" on to everybody. If you are in
North America, you should always pass "na" to everybody. Likewise
for "usa" and more local distributions. These are "distributions",
which are becoming totally separate from "newsgroups". The software
is set up to pass an article only if the sys file says it should pass
BOTH the newsgroup AND the distribution. So a typical sys file entry
should list all the distributions you pass, AND all the newsgroups you pass.
world,na,usa,oh,cmh,comp,news,sci,rec,misc,soc,talk,net
is a typical "we pass everything" entry for Columbus, Ohio. ("net" is
included for upward compatibility; we hope to have all use of "net"
eliminated by October 1986.")
Mark