[comp.unix.wizards] news programs on Suns

white@unc.cs.unc.edu (Brian T. White) (11/06/87)

We have more than 50 Suns and are looking for a way to make news reading
and posting available on these machines.  We would like only a single
spool/news directory, which will reside on a VAX-11/780 running 4.3 with
NFS.   We are running Sun UNIX 3.3 on Sun-2s and Sun-3s.

We can make news reading available by simply mounting the VAX spool/news
on each sun using NFS.  We would like to know how other sites have
solved the posting and canceling problem.

We have located two calls to inews (one in postnews, one in rn for cancelling
news), which we can replace with rsh commands to the news server.
Are there any problems associated with this approach?  Do we need to
make other changes?

Is there a better solution to the problem?  

Someone mentioned a fake NNTP inews, but we've never heard of in.nntpd.
Could someone point us to information on that?

Thanks for any information.

evan@ndcheg.UUCP (Evan Bauman) (11/08/87)

In article <1920@unc.cs.unc.edu>, white@unc.cs.unc.edu (Brian T. White) writes:
> 
> We have more than 50 Suns and are looking for a way to make news reading
> and posting available on these machines.  We would like only a single
> spool/news directory, which will reside on a VAX-11/780 running 4.3 with
> NFS.   We are running Sun UNIX 3.3 on Sun-2s and Sun-3s.
> 
> We can make news reading available by simply mounting the VAX spool/news
> on each sun using NFS.  We would like to know how other sites have
> solved the posting and canceling problem.
> 
> We have located two calls to inews (one in postnews, one in rn for cancelling
> news), which we can replace with rsh commands to the news server.
> Are there any problems associated with this approach?  Do we need to
> make other changes?
> 
> Is there a better solution to the problem?  
> 
> Someone mentioned a fake NNTP inews, but we've never heard of in.nntpd.
> Could someone point us to information on that?
> 
> Thanks for any information.

You can get the nntp source code from many arpanet sites via anonyomous
ftp.  I think it's on ucbarpa.berkeley.edu for starters.  Install the 
nntp daemon and the 'fake' inews that is supplied.  Then re-compile
the news software (make sure to use the latest patches, patch#12)
using localize.nntp .  Install these nntp-able binaries in a common
disk location which is mounted by clients via NFS.

I did this here at ND with Sun 3's and it works like a charm.  We have
readnews, vnews, checknews, and postnews running using nntp.

Many thanks to Rick for a job well done!

	Evan Bauman
	Univ. of Notre Dame
	..!iuvax!ndcheg!evan

david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) (11/09/87)

In article <330@ndcheg.UUCP>, evan@ndcheg.UUCP (Evan Bauman) writes:
> You can get the nntp source code from many arpanet sites via anonyomous
> ftp.  I think it's on ucbarpa.berkeley.edu for starters.  Install the 
> nntp daemon and the 'fake' inews that is supplied.  Then re-compile
> the news software (make sure to use the latest patches, patch#12)
> using localize.nntp .  Install these nntp-able binaries in a common
> disk location which is mounted by clients via NFS.
 
> I did this here at ND with Sun 3's and it works like a charm.  We have
> readnews, vnews, checknews, and postnews running using nntp.
 
> Many thanks to Rick for a job well done!


To give credit where credit is due, also thanks to Stan Barber for
taking the time and effort to provide NNTP support for
readnews, checknews, vnews and postnews which was for a long time
lacking.

Also thanks to the person (who??) that did the first NNTP interface
to Larry Wall's rn.





-- 
	David Robinson		elroy!david@csvax.caltech.edu     ARPA
				david@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov
				ames!elroy!david UUCP
Disclaimer: No one listens to me anyway!