rdomes@zaphod.UUCP (Ronald J. Domes) (05/03/88)
I am considering setting up a Mac to run USENET. Are there any packages that will allow me to do this. What I would like to know is how do those people who have their own Mac site access and/or use USENET. Any assistance will be appreciated. Thanks Ronald James Domes Develcon Electronics Ltd.
chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/05/88)
>I am considering setting up a Mac to run USENET. Are there any packages >that will allow me to do this. What I would like to know is how do those >people who have their own Mac site access and/or use USENET. Any >assistance will be appreciated. There's one package I know of. It's called A/UX. chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ I come to preach to a religion that doesn't exist. It has no members. It has no clergy. It has no doctrine. It has no collection plate.
wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu (Pierce T. Wetter) (05/07/88)
In article <2370@zaphod.UUCP> rdomes@zaphod.UUCP (Ronald J. Domes) writes: >I am considering setting up a Mac to run USENET. Are there any packages >that will allow me to do this. What I would like to know is how do those >people who have their own Mac site access and/or use USENET. Any >assistance will be appreciated. There is supposedly a mac version of uucp called uupc, but I have never been able to get ahold of it. This would probably be a first step in getting access to usenet. If you find a working copy send it to me. Pierce Wetter ---------------------------------------------------------------- wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu Race For Space Grand Prize Winner. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Useless Advice #986: Never sit on a Tack.
rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd) (05/09/88)
In article <6437@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Pierce T. Wetter) writes: >In article <2370@zaphod.UUCP> rdomes@zaphod.UUCP (Ronald J. Domes) writes: >>I am considering setting up a Mac to run USENET. Are there any packages >>that will allow me to do this. What I would like to know is how do those > There is supposedly a mac version of uucp called uupc, but I have never >been able to get ahold of it. This would probably be a first step in getting Hmm... I've seen queries like this ("How do I run Usenet on my xxx?") in two other newsgroups in the past month. Evidently there are quite a few people out there who want to run Usenet on their machines. Anyway, although I'm not intimately familiar with uupc, I am quite familiar with its ancestor, DCP, so I think I can talk about it without making too much of an idiot of myself. BTW, if you have FTP access, uupc can be obtained by anonymous FTP from uunet.uu.net. Brief lecture on uucp/usenet technology: On real Unix systems, uucico is the program that does the dialin to the other machine and handles the communication protocols. Uuxqt is the program that does execution of commands sent from the remote site to yours (almost always either the "rnews" command or "rmail"). Rmail is the command, executed by uuxqt, that reads in mail messages destined for your site and puts them in your mailbox. Netnews is sent between machines in "compressed batches", i.e. files put together out of multiple articles and then compressed. The receiving machine is made (via uuxqt) to execute the command "rnews" on the incoming batch, which uncompresses the articles, breaks up the batch, and sticks the articles in the various newsgroup directories. Uupc consists of clones of uucico,uuxqt,rmail, and also contains a program to send mail to other sites, but there is no rnews or equivalent. So you see that with uupc, you can set up your Mac (or whatever) to receive and send mail, but you can't really handle news very well. If you're willing to put up with a fairly crude news interface, you can hack together your own "rnews" to just uncompress the batch and invoke whatever Mac users use instead of less(1) to read the articles. This is admittedly crude, since the articles in batches are not sorted by newsgroup and all the conveniences you get even with the most primitive Unix newsreaders are lacking, but it does work; a friend of mine does it on his PC. You will need a version of compress that runs on your Mac, but compress shouldn't be too hard to port. You could try porting the actual Usenet software to the Mac. The software is freely available from many places, and theoretically you could set up Usenet software to run on your Mac on top of uupc just as the real thing runs on top of uucp. The problem is that Usenet software relies heavily on Unix features like fork(2), pipe(2), and link(2), which I don't think have any Mac OS equivalents. The port won't be easy, but it should be at least possible with a few months work. Of course, if you can afford it, buying a Mac II with A/UX is the best solution of all; not only can you easily run Usenet on it, but you get a real Unix system to play with besides. If only it wasn't quite so expensive... -- Richard Todd Dubious Domain: rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu USSnail:820 Annie Court,Norman OK 73069 Fido:1:147/1 UUCP: {many AT&T sites}!occrsh!uokmax!rmtodd "MSDOS is a Neanderthal operating system" - Henry Spencer