nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) (05/30/90)
I am running BSD4.3 with Cnews patched thru April 1990. I have several nntp feeds via internet and just added some UUCP feeds. The problem I have encountered is that Cnews inserts "ucselx.sdsu.edu" into the path for the UUCP feeds. While this is fine for NNTP feeds, the UUCP feeds don't recongise that "ucselx" is "ucselx.sdsu.edu" and send me back the same articles with a modified path. Then my machine has an attitude attack and corrupts the active file and my history file. I have changed my sys file entry from "ME:" to "ME/ucselx.sdsu.edu:", in hopes of stopping these articles from my UUCP feeds. I have also asked them to put "ucselx/ucselx.sdsu.edu:" in their sys file entry for me if they run Cnews. Is there anything I am missing? Any pointers or suggestions are welcome. Thanks. -- Ron Nash San Diego State University Internet: nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu UUCP: ucsd!sdsu!ucselx!nash
flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (05/31/90)
The hostname inserted in the Path: header comes from the file NEWSCTL/whoami, or from gethostname() if that file doesn't exist. >I have changed my sys file entry from "ME:" to "ME/ucselx.sdsu.edu:", >in hopes of stopping these articles from my UUCP feeds. This breaks some of the shell scripts, like NEWSBIN/ctl/newgroup. The scripts try to find "ME" in the sys file, but fail to recognize "ME" followed by a slash. This is easy to fix. Anywhere you see egrep "^($me|ME):" replace it with egrep "^($me|ME)[:/]" I think it's only ctl/newgroup and ctl/checkgroups that are affected. -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu *!psuvax1!flee
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (05/31/90)
In article <1990May30.165503.12772@ucselx.sdsu.edu> nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) writes: >... Cnews inserts "ucselx.sdsu.edu" into the path >for the UUCP feeds. While this is fine for NNTP feeds, the UUCP feeds >don't recongise that "ucselx" is "ucselx.sdsu.edu" and send me back >the same articles with a modified path. Then my machine has an attitude >attack and corrupts the active file and my history file. We'd be interested to see details on the latter; they should just get bounced as duplicates. As for what gets put in Path, it's whatever you told "build" the name of your machine was for news purposes. We should probably underline this more firmly in the documentation: as in any network naming scheme, you and your neighbors *must* agree on your news name or trouble will ensue. >I have changed my sys file entry from "ME:" to "ME/ucselx.sdsu.edu:", >in hopes of stopping these articles from my UUCP feeds... This probably won't help. I believe that subfield is ignored on the ME line. Geoff? >I have also >asked them to put "ucselx/ucselx.sdsu.edu:" in their sys file entry for >me if they run Cnews. Simply changing the *names* of their sys-file entries (and the corresponding batch directories) to your new name will cure the problem. If they know you as "ucselx" and you know yourself as "ucselx.sdsu.edu", it really should not surprise you that things go wrong. -- As a user I'll take speed over| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) (05/31/90)
The exclusions subfield of your own sys file entry (e.g. the ME entry) is not used for anything. In particular, it is not compared against Path: headers of incoming articles. -- Geoff Collyer utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu
ken@sdd.hp.com (Ken Stone) (06/01/90)
In article <1990May30.165503.12772@ucselx.sdsu.edu> nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) writes: > >I have changed my sys file entry from "ME:" to "ME/ucselx.sdsu.edu:", >in hopes of stopping these articles from my UUCP feeds. I have also >asked them to put "ucselx/ucselx.sdsu.edu:" in their sys file entry for >me if they run Cnews. I don't what the ME/ucselx.sdsu.edu does for you but having your feeds change to ucselx/ucselx.sdsu.edu is >REQUIRED< as I found out .... you see, we are doing about the same thing that you are. It took a while to get everybody synced up and cut the backflow down :-) -- Ken
fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (06/01/90)
> nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) writes: >> I have also >> asked them to put "ucselx/ucselx.sdsu.edu:" in their sys file entry for >> me if they run Cnews. henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > Simply changing the *names* of their sys-file entries (and the corresponding > batch directories) to your new name will cure the problem. Then won't sendbatches try to do a "uux -r ucselx.sdsu.edu!rnews ..." and crap out with "bad system name"? Personally, I think Mr. Nash's idea is right - that's what I do here, and it works fine. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (06/02/90)
In article <anj81p.com@wang.com> fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes: >> Simply changing the *names* of their sys-file entries (and the corresponding >> batch directories) to your new name will cure the problem. > >Then won't sendbatches try to do a "uux -r ucselx.sdsu.edu!rnews ..." and >crap out with "bad system name"? Depends on how things are set up. There is potential for such problems, yes. Actually, life is simpler if you call your system "ucselx" and just forget the domain business for news purposes. (Note that the From lines are composed separately, using a different system name, so you can still specify a domainist address for mailed replies.) -- As a user I'll take speed over| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (06/05/90)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > Actually, life is simpler if you call your system "ucselx" and just > forget the domain business for news purposes. (Note that the From lines > are composed separately, using a different system name, so you can still > specify a domainist address for mailed replies.) To do this, either ucselx would have to be registered in the UUCP maps, or you take that chance that someone else, somewhere, will create a system named ucselx and you'll never receive any news that passes through it (and the other ucselx will never get any of your postings). We do the trick where all systems put "xxx.wang.com" in the Path:, and the gateway machine has "xxx/xxx.wang.com:" in the sys file, because I don't want to register every machine name inside Wang in the UUCP maps to guarantee its uniqueness. For systems like "ucselx", the danger is pretty minimal, but we've got systems with names like "jeeves", "tiger" and "sununix" (people here have very little imagination). It already seems like a problem to me that systems like snorkelwacker.mit.edu put "...!snorkelwacker!..." in the Path:, but aren't registered in the UUCP maps. Trying to use a flat namespace with no central registry is potential disaster. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz