[news.admin] newses

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/04/90)

In article <648@enorm.eb.se> rikard@EB.se (H Rikard Johansson) writes:
>What is the major differences betwixt Bnews and Cnews?

Well, to sum up *very* tersely (I'm working on a more verbose version
that I'll post when ready, if people are interested),  C News is much
faster, is easier to customize, and offers some minor improvements in
functionality (e.g. more detailed control of expiration), but could
use better documentation and is still evolving somewhat.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/04/90)

In article <1990Feb3.222301.24047@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <648@enorm.eb.se> rikard@EB.se (H Rikard Johansson) writes:
> >What is the major differences betwixt Bnews and Cnews?

> Well, to sum up *very* tersely (I'm working on a more verbose version
> that I'll post when ready, if people are interested),  C News is much
> faster, is easier to customize, and offers some minor improvements in
> functionality (e.g. more detailed control of expiration), but could
> use better documentation and is still evolving somewhat.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, and installing CNEWS on anything that's not close to System V or BSD
is like having a root canal. It took me 13 hours to get it up on System III,
plus frequent interventions in the following weeks, and it's still not
expiring at all. Can you say "find -mtime +7 -print | xargs rm; expire -r"?
I knew you could.

CNEWS is a much cleaner implementation, but it really needs an existing news
guru if you're not a vanilla system.

On the other hand when Henry says it's much faster, he's not kidding. On our
system it's like 50 times faster unbatching news. *FIFTY* times.
-- 
 _--_|\  Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>.
/      \
\_.--._/ Xenix Support -- it's not just a job, it's an adventure!
      v  "Have you hugged your wolf today?" `-_-'

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (02/06/90)

In article <42J1N8Cxds13@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Yes, and installing CNEWS on anything that's not close to System V or BSD
>is like having a root canal...

We've had plenty of reports of it going up with minimal pain on systems
that we know are pretty impure. :-)  Peter's experience seems to have
been unusual.
-- 
SVR4:  every feature you ever |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
wanted, and plenty you didn't.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (02/07/90)

In article <1990Feb3.222301.24047@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp
	(Henry Spencer) writes:
>                                                       C News is much
>faster

Not clear that this is universally the case.  I'm administering
two independent news sites running B News; one receives
compressed batches with uucp, the other uses NNTP.  Guess which
one spends a lot of time on news?  The one that unbatches.  Where
is the time going?  inews?  WRONG.  The uncompress.  I suspect
C News is not going to make an appreciable difference.

P.S. B expire on ~120MB is pretty reasonable too.  The biggest
problem so far is disk fragmentation, and C News is not going to
help there either.

					-=EPS=-

alan@numm.nu.oz (Alan Hargreaves) (02/07/90)

In article <1990Feb5.173359.9094@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <42J1N8Cxds13@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>Yes, and installing CNEWS on anything that's not close to System V or BSD
>>is like having a root canal...
>
>We've had plenty of reports of it going up with minimal pain on systems
>that we know are pretty impure. :-)  Peter's experience seems to have
>been unusual.

hmmm, anyone who thinks that my v7 is anything like a "standard" BSD or Sys V
should think again. The only hassles i had got ironed out in the alpha test
(ie global scope on struct members & identifiers unique in first 7 bytes).

i'm VERY happy with it, and now have almost no trouble reinstalling after
updates.

i've redirected followups to news.software.b, where they really belong.

alan.
-- 
Alan Hargreaves	(vk2mgl)  SysCleric  alan@numm.nu.oz    Phone: (049) 685 597
University Computing Services, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia.
                     Hacker: One who accidentally destroys.
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