taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (02/08/87)
Now that I've bashed my head into the wall for the past four hours trying to track this one down, it seems that the "-M" flag in the latest version of inews (2.11) is semi-worthless due to a bug. Specifically, if I hand it a "from" line that is in uucp notation rather than internet (e.g. hplabs!taylor instead of taylor@hplabs) it will ignore the '-M' and make the From: be the person invoking inews instead. This is really a problem!! Almost all of the postings I get for both mod.comp-soc and mod.conferences is from someone who used uucp to get mail to me, rather than the internet. Soooo.... The documentation of this bug is as follows: I submitted, via "inews -M -h -F '<reference>' < file" the following article: From: munnari!runx.oz!ronn (Ron Newton) Subject: Re: Shareware demise, and the evolution of computer users... Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc Sender: taylor@hplabs Distribution: hpl Approved: taylor@hplabs [message body] It appeared in the group as: From: taylor@hplabsc.HP.COM (Dave Taylor) Subject: Re: Shareware demise, and the evolution of computer users... Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc Sender: taylor@hplabs Distribution: hpl Approved: taylor@hplabs [message body] BUT, when I rewrote the From: line and resubmitted it using the *exact same inews invokation*: From: ronn%runx.oz@munnari (really munnari!runx.oz!ronn -- Ron Newton) Subject: Re: Shareware demise, and the evolution of computer users... Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc Sender: taylor@hplabs Distribution: hpl Approved: taylor@hplabs it worked as I wanted. You can go into 'mod.comp-soc' to see how this one turned out. Now it might be that this is a deliberate attempt to force people to use domain-style addressing, but as a moderator with only limited time to spend on reformatting information from users to be posted, I think that we're being a bit overly direct. I'm real close to hacking the test (presumably there is one) out of inews altogether - after all, if *I*, as the *moderator* of the group, submit something, then it should be accepted REGARDLESS OF ADDRESS FORMAT! If nothing else *** at least document the damn quirk!! *** Very miffed, and having wasted a few hours of a Saturday, -- Dave Taylor
reid@decwrl.UUCP (02/09/87)
In article <1252@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: >Now that I've bashed my head into the wall for the past four hours >trying to track this one down, it seems that the "-M" flag in the >latest version of inews (2.11) is semi-worthless due to a bug. > >Specifically, if I hand it a "from" line that is in uucp notation >rather than internet (e.g. hplabs!taylor instead of taylor@hplabs) >it will ignore the '-M' and make the From: be the person invoking >inews instead. This is a classic case of a camel being a horse designed by a committee. I implemented the "-M" option under 2.10.2 and sent the code to Rick Adams. He included it in 2.10.3 Beta and distributed that to the Beta sites. Mel Pleasant needed some option to make news do funny things for internal Rutgers reasons, so he modified my -M option code to do something random (I have never fully understood what) when a Path was present. When I complained about this he said "oh well, as long as you make sure there isn't any path present in the article it will still work the way you want." I grumbled a lot, but nothing ever came of it. A couple of weeks ago I explained this situation on the moderators mailing list (which should include all of the people likely to use the -M option). I'm sorry it didn't reach you--it would have saved you a lot of time. Actually, there is a very good reason why you don't want a uucp-style from line in a submitted news article, but inews should probably warn you about it rather than fix it for you. The news distribution mechanism looks at the path line to see who has seen an article and who hasn't. That's how it avoids sending a message back to where it came from, thereby causing infinite loops. But if you preload the path with a mail path from the submitter to the moderator, then the article will never be sent to any of the hosts along that path. Depending on the length of that path, this can be a serious problem. Brian
jbuck@epimass.UUCP (02/09/87)
In article <1252@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: >Now that I've bashed my head into the wall for the past four hours >trying to track this one down, it seems that the "-M" flag in the >latest version of inews (2.11) is semi-worthless due to a bug. >Specifically, if I hand it a "from" line that is in uucp notation >rather than internet (e.g. hplabs!taylor instead of taylor@hplabs) >it will ignore the '-M' and make the From: be the person invoking >inews instead. The purpose of the From: line is for mail replies (unless a Reply-To field is present). Using the UUCP path you see at hplabs will not work. If you change inews the way you want to, the From line will be useless. It may as well point to you, as opposed to pointing nowhere. -- - Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck HASA (A,S) Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (02/09/87)
Brian Reid talks about the motley evolution of the "-M" flag for the latest version of inews in reference to my bug posting, and then says >Actually, there is a very good reason why you don't want a uucp-style from >line in a submitted news article, but inews should probably warn you about it >rather than fix it for you. The news distribution mechanism looks at the path >line to see who has seen an article and who hasn't. What's wrong with this statement? We've suddenly moved from the From: line to the Path: line! I *know* what the various headers in the message are for, and I would certainly *not* want to mess with the Path: field too much (I would like to be able to change the base mailing address though, so the path could be something like "Path: hplabsc!comp-soc" when it started out, rather than "hplabsc!taylor", but that's another story entirely). Nonetheless I still haven't been told why the FROM line cannot have a uucp style address. My original statement stands: The inability to handle uucp-style From: lines when using the '-M' flag is a bug in inews that should be fixed immediately. -- Dave Taylor taylor@hplabs.HP.COM ps: The message Brian sent must have been one of the 180+ messages I lost while at USENIX. Perhaps you could send it to me again, Brian?
jordan@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (02/10/87)
If you have a non-domain'ed From: line, you should probably hack it from ...!hosta!hostb!hostc!user into user@hostc.UUCP for this ... otherwise, how can anyone do anything with it? If you just want it for show (so that the person who submitted it is on the From: line and your name, Dave Taylor, is in the Sender: line ...), then it should either be something pathalias can chomp on or pure fluff. /jordan