[news.admin] news help please!

doug@cogent.UUCP (Doug Perlich) (12/23/89)

Lines: 40

I'm still having lots of problems learning everything about the news
system.  I inherited the job of news admin and have no one to teach me.
Sob, sob :-(.

#1:
Is this the correct news group to watch, more specifically, what is the
difference between news.admin and news.sysadmin?  I assume news.sysadmin
is for site system administrators and this is for NEWS administrators.

#2:
We've got inews but no man pages for it.  Is this normal?  How can I
learn about inews.  Actually, where can I learn about the news system
beyond what the uucp stuff tells me, I can't seem to find much information
anywhere or I would RTFM's.

#3:
I'm still shaky on how our news is decompressed after it is received.
Sometimes after our source finishes the transfer, I'll look in the spool
directory and see the files but the uucico(?) doesn't start.  (Is
that the program that decompresses the news?)  Can I start it myself?

#4:
An immediate problem we are having now is that our /usr/lib/uucp/Systems
file is set up so our news source is never called: <source> Never.
Is this causing the WRONG TIME TO CALL error in 
/usr/spool/uucp/.Log/uucico/<source>.  I thought the "Never" meant
WE never call THEM.  I do want to set it up so they call us only in the
wee hours, I think the previous news admin. did this but that brings
me to another problem.  Our source is in the same time zone as us but
all the .Log/uucico entries are for EST, not PST, is this because
the /etc/profile is not run when they call us since they don't get
a shell, rather /usr/lib/uucp/uucico as their shell, and somehow
our default time zone is EST.  This might cause the WRONG TIME error?

Please email me any answers to my stupid questions or help me
find the right direction.  (My life has no direction, tell me where
to go!)
Thanks in advance.

-Doug