jkimball@srcsip.UUCP (05/27/87)
This may have dropped into the bit bucket in one of our recent
reconfigurations, so I'll post it again (in hopes of responses!).
We want to set up an in-house discussion forum / bulletin board system, which
will
1) support local discussions on random topics;
2) support on-line project workbooks (hopefully moving some design-review
meetings on-line);
3) act as a front end for Usenet newsgroups and (hopefully) ARPA mailing
lists.
We'll be NFSing (most of) our Unix machines together, so we'd like to
maintain one 'message database' ('article database'? 'spool directory'?)
which all the machines can get to over our lan.
A future goal is to also make this conferencing system accessible from our
DECNETed VMS hosts. But let me ask the easier questions first.
1) Is there anyone out there who is using a common system for in-house
discussions and external-network newsgroups?
Do you have any advice?
How do you keep local discussions from propagating out onto the net(s)?
Is it blue-sky to think that we can use the same ``article database'' for
local discussions, Usenet newsgroups, and ARPA mailing lists?
2) My random diggings-around make me believe that there is something of
a ``standard'' Usenet message database format. Keep each discussion in a
subdirectory, whose pathname mirrors the discussion name
(/usr/spool/news/software/b for news.software.b). The discussion directory
contains only messages, each in its individual file, and the files' names
are sequential integers. The internal format of messages is ``compatable
with RFC 822'' (which I haven't read). The discussion directories must
be writeable by a distinguished ``user'', which the message-posting program
setuids itself to.
Is this correct?
Is this what most sites use?
Does NFS get along famously with this?
Anybody have alternates to suggest?
2.1) Probably a bad question: why not concatenate messages onto 1 file,
and maintaining an index of that file (to avoid having to open
and close n files)?
3) To support local project-specific discussions, we'd like to be able to
limit posting *and reading* privileges for certain discussions to particular
sets of usernames.
Does the ``standard'' spool directory format allow this?
How can you do it?
(I was wondering if maybe you can have the distinguished user own the spool
directories, and have write permission, but have some discussion
directories owned by particular groups, and limit read permission to those
groups).
4) We may be able to get an ARPA connection; if so, we'd love to use the
same system for both the Usenet newgroups and ARPA mailing lists.
Is there anyone out there who is running both Usenet and ARPA? What
software do you use for the ARPA mailing lists? Must you use two
separate message databases and two separate front ends, for the two
nets (ugh...)?
5) What are the pros and cons of the various news reader front ends? (A
loaded question, but I would appreciate some pros and cons from partisans.)
As standard, please reply to me, and I'll summarize if anyone cares.
John Kimball
UUCP: {ihnp4,philabs,umn-cs,ems}!srcsip!jkimball
ARPA: Kimball@HI-MULTICS