jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (04/22/87)
If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news,
you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest
(do I see Erik Fair's work in that name?). This is because on VMS,
the directory name would be
DISK:[EUNICE.USR.SPOOL.NEWS.COMP.SYS.IBM.PC.DIGEST]
and VMS only allows subdirectories to be eight levels deep.
If your Eunice site is a leaf node, you can cope with the problem
by aliasing the group to a different name. I suggest
(in aliases)
comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest comp.sys.ibm-pc.digest
This is because, when you post to the group, it gets converted
to mail by replacing all the dots with dashes, giving an address
of
comp-sys-ibm-pc-digest@backbone-site
Using the above alias, the mailing address will be the same.
As maintainer of the Eunice 2.11 news, I could attempt to hack
something in. It would also be possible to make SPOOLDIR be
/spool/news. But do we really need five-level names? Is it
too late to use a shorter name? Or the name I suggested above?
--
- Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck
seismo!epiwrl!epimass!jbuckfair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (04/22/87)
In the referenced article, Joe Buck <jbuck@epimass.UUCP> writes: >If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news, >you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest >(do I see Erik Fair's work in that name?). You do NOT. I don't like that name any better than you do (at least not the "digest" part), but I have no alternative that would be acceptable to the USENET community. Concerning depth, I see no reason why we shouldn't go arbitrarily deep when it appears to be appropriate, and in the cited case, it is appropriate. One day, I hope that someone writes an interface that views the USENET name-space as a tree (which it is), and plays depth games of one sort or another. It would be an interesting change from the current paradigm, anyway... As for the problem, since this is a VMS limitation (and therefore unlikely to change soon), you should go to some type of mapping system. Messy, I know, but I don't think that we should allow the limitations of VMS systems to hinder the USENET, any more than I think that we should allow the limitations of, say, B news 2.9 sites to hinder USENET. I'm somewhat surprised that Eunice didn't encounter this problem and solve it already. Did Kashtan just work around it all over? Does MS/DOS have this problem too? If so, I'd be interested to know what Lauren Weinstein did in UULINK. And how about VM/CMS? There was something about this sort of problem in that ";login:" article about the netnews implementation for VM/CMS that Princeton did... Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
IRWIN@pucc.UUCP (04/22/87)
In article <18509@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes: >In the referenced article, Joe Buck <jbuck@epimass.UUCP> writes: >>If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news, >>you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest > ... >And how about VM/CMS? There was >something about this sort of problem in that ";login:" article about the >netnews implementation for VM/CMS that Princeton did... Yes, since VM/CMS identifies a file by (user,minidisk,filename,filetype), and I find it most practical that all articles have the same (user,minidisk), I have used a mapping which is much less convenient that the usual 2.11 one. Filename and filetype are each limited to 8 characters, so I map the newsgrup names into 4-digit numbers and use the filetype for the article number. It will support 10^4-1 newsgroups and 10^8-1 articles, but I sure wish I could use a tree structure instead. Irwin Tillman BITNET: IRWIN@PUCC Princeton University UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,cbosgd}!psuvax1!PUCC.BITNET!IRWIN
perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP (04/23/87)
In article <1082@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: >If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news, >you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest >(do I see Erik Fair's work in that name?). This is because on VMS, >the directory name would be > > DISK:[EUNICE.USR.SPOOL.NEWS.COMP.SYS.IBM.PC.DIGEST] > >and VMS only allows subdirectories to be eight levels deep. Perhaps you can get around this by defining a logical name for a directory such that the top level newsgroups will be the first level of sub-directory, e.g. $ assign/translation=conceal _hsc000$dua0:[eunice.usr.spool.news.] news (note: use physical ^^^ device name need ^ that .) Then news:[comp], news:[comp.sys], etc. would be the newsgroup locations, and you can then have groups up to 8 levels deep. I'm not too familiar with the Eunice parts of the news software, but I presume that somehow SPOOLDIR could be defined using a NEWS: logical name like this (/news/ ?) ...Rick perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP, perry@vuvaxcom.BITNET Dr. Rick Perry, Department of Electrical Engineering Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, 215-645-4224
jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (04/24/87)
In article <1082@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: >>If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news, >>you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest >>... This is because on VMS, the directory name would be >> >> DISK:[EUNICE.USR.SPOOL.NEWS.COMP.SYS.IBM.PC.DIGEST] >> >>and VMS only allows subdirectories to be eight levels deep. In article <724@vu-vlsi.UUCP> perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP (Rick Perry) writes: > Perhaps you can get around this by defining a logical name for a >directory such that the top level newsgroups will be the first level of >sub-directory, e.g. > >$ assign/translation=conceal _hsc000$dua0:[eunice.usr.spool.news.] news >(note: use physical ^^^ device name need ^ that .) > >Then news:[comp], news:[comp.sys], etc. would be the newsgroup locations, >and you can then have groups up to 8 levels deep. I'm not too familiar >with the Eunice parts of the news software, but I presume that somehow >SPOOLDIR could be defined using a NEWS: logical name like this (/news/ ?) Unfortunately, Eunice can't deal with rooted logical names correctly (well, at least it's a documented bug -- maybe it will be fixed in the new version). Eunice does a fairly complete job of emulating 4.1bsd, by the way; the #ifdefs for VMS in the code don't really change that much. They emulated the system calls and then used roughly the same source code as Berkeley did for the utilities. You don't notice you're not on Unix (other than the different way typeahead is done by the VMS terminal driver) until you hit an edge (like trying to create a nineth-level directory). So what am I going to do about it? Nothing! Eunice news sites have two options: define SPOOLDIR to be /spool/news or something like that, or use an alias (comp.sys.ibm-pc.digest is probably best). -- - Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck seismo!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (04/25/87)
In article <1094@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: >So what am I going to do about it? Nothing! Eunice news sites have >two options: define SPOOLDIR to be /spool/news or something like >that, or use an alias (comp.sys.ibm-pc.digest is probably best). NOTE: if you use the "alias" approach, be sure that your site is only a "leaf" node of the network (that is, you only have one netnews neighbor), so that this change does not propagate out onto the network. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (04/26/87)
In article <18577@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes: >NOTE: if you use the "alias" approach, be sure that your site is only a >"leaf" node of the network (that is, you only have one netnews >neighbor), so that this change does not propagate out onto the >network. Certainly. Of course, anyone who would use a Eunice site to feed other sites, given the lethargic sluggishness and unreliability of Eunice systems, is a true masochist. -- - Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck seismo!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck
levy@ttrdc.UUCP (04/26/87)
In article <724@vu-vlsi.UUCP>, perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP (Rick Perry) writes: < >the directory name would be < > DISK:[EUNICE.USR.SPOOL.NEWS.COMP.SYS.IBM.PC.DIGEST] < >and VMS only allows subdirectories to be eight levels deep. < Perhaps you can get around this by defining a logical name for a < directory such that the top level newsgroups will be the first level of < sub-directory, e.g. < $ assign/translation=conceal _hsc000$dua0:[eunice.usr.spool.news.] news < < Then news:[comp], news:[comp.sys], etc. would be the newsgroup locations, < and you can then have groups up to 8 levels deep. I'm not too familiar < with the Eunice parts of the news software, but I presume that somehow < SPOOLDIR could be defined using a NEWS: logical name like this (/news/ ?) This works fine under DCL. I tried it under Eunice -- a bust. Yes, I created a system logical name and used assign/trans=conceal. Yes, I put the name in sys$system:root. Eunice "knew" what the logical name meant but still refused to go or make directories deeper than 8 levels relative to the device top level directory [0,0]. She would go one level deeper but no more in accessing directories put there using DCL IF she was given a full UNIX pathname, but I couldn't cd into those directories. Also a "pwd" would print out the pathname as it would have if the logical name had never been used. Apparently, Eunice translates concealed logical names too. <sigh> Probably better to have [news] be an actual top level directory on the disk. Eunice can handle that just fine. < ...Rick perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP, perry@vuvaxcom.BITNET < Dr. Rick Perry, Department of Electrical Engineering < Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, 215-645-4224 -- |------------dan levy------------| Path: ..!{akgua,homxb,ihnp4,ltuxa,mvuxa, | an engihacker @ | vax135}!ttrdc!ttrda!levy | at&t computer systems division | Disclaimer: try datclaimer. |--------skokie, illinois--------|
kashtan@sri-unix.ARPA (David Kashtan) (04/26/87)
Eunice 4.3 is indeed 4.3bsd! The version that I gave to Wollongong is based on the 4.3bsd-beta release and they are, at this very moment, bringing up the "official" 4.3bsd release. David
steven@pearl.berkeley.edu (Stephen the Greatest) (04/29/87)
Hey guys, I am absolutely sick of these messages talking about 5-part names. Can't somebody talk about something intelligent about EUNICE? This 5-part stuff has been going on for ages. - Stephen
libes@nbs-amrf.UUCP (05/01/87)
I'm not sure if I want to know this, but just what is the reason
that VMS cannot handle >8 levels of directories? Is it really that
impossible to change?
Surely even VMS users must feel this is an annoyance, too.
Particularly, with the larger and larger file systems one finds on
VAXen these days, it seems surprising that DEC never fixed (uhh,
changed) this.
Perhaps it is coming. After all, the last major release of VMS did
increase the name space substantially (which was very helpful to
Eunice).
(Please do not flame one way or the other about the rest of the VMS
file system. I have no wish to hear another UNIX vs VMS debate.)
Don Libes {seismo,mimsy}!nbs-amrf!libes