larry@kitty.UUCP (11/18/86)
In article <1396@lsuc.UUCP>, dave@lsuc.UUCP writes: > This shouldn't make any difference to anyone except our > immediate neighbours, but just in case, I thought I'd mention it. > > Incidentally, I ran into some problems with the sys file ... I just converted `kitty' to 2.11 news last week, and ran into a nasty problem which had me scratching my head for a day or so... At the time of conversion, I aliased ALL of the applicable old newsgroups to their comp.* counterparts. The day after conversion, I started getting all sorts of mail failure messages from ihnp4 concerning failed article submissions to moderated newsgroups. Since `kitty' passes traffic for several sites, it was not immediately apparent what site had originated these rejected submissions since the mail failure messages were addressed to kitty!root. So, before getting too concerned, I waited another day, and once again I got deluged with these failed article submissions. Upon investigation, I saw that _certain_ incoming news articles to kitty were being _automatically_ submitted by rnews to a backbone site for transmission to a moderator! Upon further investigation, it turns out that if RNEWS SEES AN ARTICLE FOR A MODERATED NEWSGROUP WITHOUT AN `APPROVED LINE', IT WILL THEN SUBMIT THE ARTICLE AS IF IT WERE LOCALLY POSTED! An examination of the sys file indicated that the problem was NOT there. An examination of inews.c then localized the problem. There is a section if #IFDEF-ed code in inews.c called `DONTFOWARD' [sic]. The purpose of this code IF DEFINED is to prevent the above from happening if inews is invoked as rnews; it is normal for this to happen if inews is invoked as inews since it is the 2.11 mechanism for moderated article submission. NO WHERE in the documentation, defs.h or makefile was `DONTFOWARD' ever mentioned. The solution to the problem was simple: I defined `DONTFOWARD' and recompiled inews. Incidently, the reason why the problem was not immediately obvious is that only about six newsgroups were affected BECAUSE they were still in a transition from unmoderated --> moderated. In my case, the problem groups were: comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.mac, comp.sources.unix, comp.sources.bugs, comp.sources.games and comp.sources.mac. <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|bbncca|decvax|nike|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"