[news.config] Local Moderated newsgroups

celozzi@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM (Dominic Celozzi) (08/03/88)

Objective:
  Create local newsgroups which are moderated.

Problem:
  According to O'Reilly & Associates (Managing UUCP and Usenet -
  p.194): "News version 2.11 will automatically mail postings to
  moderated newsgroups to the moderator.... The mailpaths file should
  contain the address of the nearest backbone site.... When someone
  posts to a moderated group, the article will be forwarded to the
  backbone site, from which it will be mailed to the current moderator
  of the group."

  If postings are automatically mailed to the backbone site, then how
  is it possible to "intercept" these postings and forward them to the
  moderator?  Also, how can the moderator be granted privilege to post
  articles without having the software mail his/her postings to the backbone?

Please e-mail all responses to me, unless of course you think this is
a topic which would be of benefit to the rest of the net.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation,
Dominic Celozzi
MCC VLSI CAD Program [512] 343-0978
P.O. Box 200195, Austin, TX 78720
ARPA: celozzi@mcc.com
UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!celozzi

jos@philapd.UUCP (Jos Vos) (08/04/88)

In article <308@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> celozzi%cad@MCC.COM (Dominic Celozzi) writes:
>Objective:
>  Create local newsgroups which are moderated.
>Problem:
>  If postings are automatically mailed to the backbone site, then how
>  is it possible to "intercept" these postings and forward them to the
>  moderator?  ...

The mailpaths file may contain:
-  an entry "internet" for mail addressing
-  an entry "backbone" to which articles for moderated newsgroups will be sent
AND....
-  entries for a newsgroup, e.g. "phil.announce", with a right part
   a-local-system!%s.
   Then posted articles are sent to a-local-system!phil-announce, in this 
   example.
   WARNING: be sure the newsgroup entries are put IN FRONT OF the backbone
   entry, because scanning stops as soon as that entry has been found.

>  ....Also, how can the moderator be granted privilege to post
>  articles without having the software mail his/her postings to the backbone?

I'm also interested in that question: but I think that's only possible 
using inews directly, without Pnews/postnews etc.
Any suggestions????

-- 
#  Jos Vos                             #  Internet  jos@philapd.UUCP  #
#  Philips TDS, Dept SSP               #                              #
#  P.O. Box 245                        #  UUCP  ..!mcvax!philapd!jos  #
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jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (08/05/88)

In article <308@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> celozzi%cad@MCC.COM (Dominic Celozzi) writes:
>Objective:
>  Create local newsgroups which are moderated.

The mailpaths file may be used to create local moderated groups.  This
was actually added in patch #1 to 2.11 news (but no one should be running
the raw version because of the large number of bugs).

Let's say you're at QXZ corporation, and you have a bunch of internal
newsgroups, some moderated, some not, all of whose names start with
qxz.  Let's pretend that the machine hq.qxz.com has mail aliases for
all the newsgroups, but the machine you manage, boondocks.qxz.com,
is where the moderator for qxz.seminars, user id "susan", has her account.
Let's also say you have a mailer that understands "@", although this
isn't necessary.  Use the following mailpaths file:

qxz.seminars	susan
qxz		%s@hq.qxz.com
backbone	%s@uunet.uu.net
internet	%s

When a user posts to the moderated group qxz.announce, the message is
then mailed to qxz-announce@hp.qxz.com, because the "qxz" line is
the first line in the file that matches.  Posting a message to
qxz.seminars is simply mailed to "susan", because there is no %s
in the address on the right-hand side.  Posting to news.announce
will be mailed to news-announce@uunet.uu.net, as before.

If you don't support mail aliases, then you'll need to list all local
moderated groups explicitly with the moderator address, as I did for
"susan" above.

Important: lines for local moderated groups must come BEFORE the
"backbone" line.



-- 
- Joe Buck  {uunet,ucbvax,pyramid,<smart-site>}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck
jbuck@epimass.epi.com	Old Arpa mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net
	If you leave your fate in the hands of the gods, don't be 
	surprised if they have a few grins at your expense.	- Tom Robbins