alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (06/19/91)
I've been following the notification debate carefully since it began. While
I think Mathew is dead wrong, I'm starting to wonder if I'm not in the same
position he was, and just wondering that makes me a little more sympathetic...
In particular, I noticed that my date header contains a comma. It is generated
by a Cnews which was up-to-date _until_ the latest "totalitarian" patches
came out (I will be upgrading shortly- the only reason I didn't is because we
have some local mail-to-news gates which might not be 100% kosher). Actually,
I should say it's generated by the inews of that Cnews.
Anyway, is this posting being seen? I'd be very happy if someone who is
definitely running the latest Cnews would send me an answer. I know this may
strain my mailbox a little, but I can deal with that. What I can't deal with
is not knowing until I finish the Cnews upgrade.
BTW, that said, and assuming that my articles are OK, why have my two postings
on the error-notification problem gone unanswered? Right or wrong, smart or
stupid, I'd have expected at least some reply...
To recap (briefly), my second, ultra-low-tech solution, is to simply collect
a log of sites that generate bad messages. Every month or so, extract a list
of offending sites, and send them each _one_ mail message. (You could get
more selective; only send mail to sites with more than 3 bad messages, etc.)
Big benefits:
1) This doesn't have to change one line of code in Cnews.
2) ... and therefore, it can be distributed apart from Cnews. If it is, not
that many people will run it, thus cutting down on the problem of mail
flooding.
3) It's incredibly simple to do. Mix one part awk, one part sort, one part
uniq, and one part cron, and microwave for thirty seconds.
4) Because of the increasing number of sites running Cnews, it's becoming
more and more likely that bad headers you see come from nearby sites. So
most (all) notification is to fairly local machines. This cuts down on the
number of duplicate notifications, as far as I can guess to the point where
they're simply not a problem any more.
What do you think? (Can you even hear me??)
---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
alexis@panix.com
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexishenry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (06/19/91)
In article <1991Jun19.062825.13193@panix.uucp> alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes: >Anyway, is this posting being seen? Yes. >... why have my two postings >on the error-notification problem gone unanswered? Possibly because everyone in a position to make intelligent comments is sick of the subject. >To recap (briefly), my second, ultra-low-tech solution, is to simply collect >a log of sites that generate bad messages. Every month or so, extract a list >of offending sites, and send them each _one_ mail message... A reasonable idea if done by a *few* sites. Doing it everywhere is bad news due to the flood-the-mailbox problem. You can't rely on a bad message's propagation being localized enough to keep this under control. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (06/20/91)
Many thanks to Mike Pelletier, Mark Lawrence, Bill Daniels, Per Hedeland,
Dewey Henize, Brendan Kehoe, Ted Lindgreen, and any others whose mail is
en-route to me at this time. It seems I'm getting through fine, regardless
of the quality of my postings. :-)
As for Henry's response to my message (oh, thanks to you too, Henry)-
That was the whole idea. A simple script, not official Cnews (and not
interfering with it in any way), run by a few people at a few sites. The
principals of self-interest lead me to conclude that people will fix their
software faster than {lazy,busy,unaware} admins install this script. I'd
do it myself, only I'm living behind a modern Cnews so it wouldn't do any
good for me to install it on this machine.
BTW, in a previous message I suggested a small list of sites that could
probably do a good job (assuming they're willing to do it): uunet, mcsun,
and uupsi came to mind immediately. At least in uunet and uupsi's cases, it
would seem to be in their interest to do this.
Lastly- I'm obviously a bit confused about the Date: stamp on news messages.
Most people mentioned that my article's Date field had no comma. Well, I just
checked and on the posting machine, it _does_ have a comma. I thought inews
stuck a date on. But how can my messages have no comma then? Is there a Bnews
site out there (or a whole bunch) rewriting my news into an acceptable form?
And are commas in Date headers a Bad Thing, as I seem to remember?
(Hm. If so, then the machine that feeds us _isn't_ running the latest patches
after all...)
Thanks,
---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
alexis@panix.com
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexismathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) (06/20/91)
alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes: > I've been following the notification debate carefully since it began. While > I think Mathew is dead wrong, ...he says, and then proceeds to suggest a system to do exactly what I'm suggesting should be done. Ho hum. Pity it doesn't work. > To recap (briefly), my second, ultra-low-tech solution, is to simply collect > a log of sites that generate bad messages. Every month or so, extract a list > of offending sites, and send them each _one_ mail message. [...] > 1) This doesn't have to change one line of code in Cnews. Actually, it does; because if you don't change C News, there's no guarantee that the bad postings will make it to the sites doing the logging. mathew