dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (04/16/89)
In article <2367@van-bc.UUCP> skl@mtsg.ubc.ca (Samuel Lam) writes: > Would rn work on a read-only NFS news volume? This question has been asked previously and I though I'd share with you how we do it. We currently run TCP/IP and the ATT RFS product. We tested NFS and it also works. The first thing we did is to decide whether or not to allow news posting software to execute on the client machines or on just the server. NFS has problems with file and record locking unless the version supports a lock daemon. Since inews, et. al. use locking this bodes ill. Also one has to build inews, etc, to not use uname to get the hostname but to lie. [Also rn]. We chose to restrict posting to the server only. In our case we have two different machine architectures using netnews the ATT 6386 and the ATT 3B line. Further, 3B20's have different a.out and instruction sets than the 3B2/5/15/1000/4000. We advertise a RFS resoure and expect it to mount as /usenet. There is a bin directory for each machine type {3b2bin and 3b20bin}. There is a single lib and spool directory. The user arranges to have the appropriate bin directory added to their path. We don't use postnews but use Pnews, Rnmail and rn. Rn has no problems as it is a readonly system. We made versions of Rnmail and Pnews (local and remote). The local is the same as before; the remote works on the local machine until the last thing and then does remsh (aka rsh) to ship the article or letter to the server machine for posting or mailing. The only tricks were: each user must have a login account on the server machine with a .signature file. If you are NOT using the inews name routine to parse the GECOS field in /etc/passwd, you will also have to have a .fullname (or whatever) on the server. [We use $LOGNAME -- this allows for handles and spoofing.] We arrange the remote and local scripts to "lie" and use the server machine as the "sender". Mailboxes on the server are arranged to forward to the appropriate client machine [we use simple ATT mailers -- header rewriting comes later]. Arbitron is run on the server only. Thus if a user is to use only a client machine, we will never include him in the survey. As the client is the one with higher privileges and we are a multi-domain LAN we are unable to suck over from the clients the .newrc's. We could put a hack in rn to use rcp underneath a user but that sort of sneakiness tends to cause odd effects as we have very sophisticated users as well as novices. Also, most people use several different machines for work and a .newsrc merge hasn't been written. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg,attunix}!cuuxb!dlm OR dlm@cuuxb.att.com