nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (11/23/90)
I like to read mailing lists as if they were newsgroups, and I know I'm not the only one. But I've got a problem on my machine, which is that the relaynews that's run from newsrun sometimes goes out to lunch. It just sits there and sits there. Obviously, that's a problem to be solved. But until it is solved, inews wants to run relaynews directly, so sometimes inews is held up forever. This leads to processes piling up, and eventually sendmail can't run new processes to process mail. And this leads to bounced mail, and unhappy mailing list owners. So, I've modified the contributed 'usenet' script so run 'rnews' instead of 'inews'. This makes the rash assumption that the incoming mail is already properly formed. In most cases it will be. After all, since 'usenet' adds the Newsgroups: and Path: header, what's left to be wrong? It shouldn't modify the 'From:' line because it has no reason to expect that it knows better than the sender. Also, along the same lines, I'm tempted to modify 'inews' so that it doesn't run relaynews immediately, but instead runs 'newsspool' so that relaynews gets run later. Since all of our posting is done over NNTP *anyway*, you don't get the benefit of any error messages that inews, anne.jones, or relaynews might grant you. Of course, it would be better to find out why 'relaynews' is hanging, but I don't have a clue where to start... -- --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) FAX 315-268-7600 It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear -- Freeman Dyson I joined the League for Programming Freedom, and I hope you'll join too.
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (11/24/90)
In article <NELSON.90Nov22105755@image.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >So, I've modified the contributed 'usenet' script so run 'rnews' instead >of 'inews'. This makes the rash assumption that the incoming mail is >already properly formed. In most cases it will be. After all, since >'usenet' adds the Newsgroups: and Path: header, what's left to be wrong? Could be a moderated newsgroup. Could lack a message-ID. Several other possibilities. Inews checks for a lot of things. The main consequence of going via rnews rather than inews is that ill-formed news simply vanishes into the bit bucket, rather than being reported. >Also, along the same lines, I'm tempted to modify 'inews' so that it >doesn't run relaynews immediately, but instead runs 'newsspool' so >that relaynews gets run later... The main problem with this is on sites that don't run newsrun during busy times of the day. Users tend to get restive if their posting *seems* to just disappear into the void, even if it really is queued up to be dealt with eventually. -- "I'm not sure it's possible | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology to explain how X works." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry