de5@ornl.gov (Dave Sill) (04/15/91)
ORNL has been mooching its news service from nearby University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. We're on the verge of switching over to our own server and I'm wondering how to make the transition as smooth as possible. The best method I've come up with so far is to announce the time and date at which the local server will become available and the time and date at which UT will stop allowing ORNL hosts to access their NNTP server. (Through local motd's, mailing lists, etc., as well as mass cross-postings with local distribution) Users will be instructed to catch up on all subscribed groups, switch to the local server via the NNTPSERVER environment variable, and zero out their .newsrc files. After UT stops serving us, we'll change the system default server to the local server. Should we also recommend catching up each group on the new server immediately? If not, there'll be a bunch of duplicates in each group. If we do, there's a risk of missing some very recently posted articles, depending upon how fast the switch is made. I suppose we should explain the choices and let the user decide. I'm assuming all NNTP-based readers use NNTPSERVER. I'll provide a script to zero .newsrc's. Am I missing anything? Is there a Better Way? (We don't have close control of all news client systems, so we can't do anything fancy like convert .newsrc's to the local article numbers.) P.S.: Anyone interested in supplementing our feed from UTK? We'll be carrying comp, sci, misc, and selected alt groups, most likely. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) It will be a great day when our schools have Martin Marietta Energy Systems all the money they need and the Air Force Workstation Support has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.