dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) (03/12/89)
In article <2004@wa4mei.UUCP> news@wa4mei.UUCP (USENET admin) writes: #In article <304@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes: #>I accidentally newgrouped news.announce.newusers and news.announce.important #>Lesson: #>Never, ever, make a quick-n-dirty /usr/lib/news/sys file like this: #>mysite:all:: #>anothersite:all:L: # #Apparently there are a lot of systems that don't know better than to #use 'all' for the newsgroup and distribution lists in their sys files. What is wrong with 'all', *if* you specifically exclude local groups? Except for a national or other major backbone site, which probably does have to protect large sections of the net from strange groups, it is *much* simpler to pass all groups except local ones than to list all the ones you do want to send. I was able to make a major simplification to our sys file by changing from the old list of groups that were allowed to 'all' followed by the few forbidden groups. It also means that if a new distribution is agreed (gnu, bionet, etc.) we get it immediately without having to update our sys file - I only do that if we do not want it. Since making the change, I've been watching the log to check that the right things go to the right sites, and they do. Here's an extract from our sys file (another little trick to make the sys file more readable is to separate the entries with a # comment line - most people don't seem to realise you can do that). stl:all,to.stl:: # stc:all,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:F: # ukc:all,!stc,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:FL6: #other sites fed not shown in this extract We are stl, which is also our local distribution (2 hosts plus some nntp clients). stc is a company distribution - about 15 hosts - and also the name of the main stc host. You'll see that we feed out to ukc (UK backbone) anything not local or within stl,stc distributions and which started reasonably near to us, e.g. from one of the sites we feed. I also dropped the file name from the sys entry, as the default /usr/spool/news/batch/<site> is OK here. If I'm wrong, please tell me why. If I'm not, then careful use of 'all' can make sys files much more readable and thus easier to maintain. -- Regards, David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK dww@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW
jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (03/14/89)
In article <1247@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> "David Wright" <dww@stl.stc.co.uk> writes: >What is wrong with 'all', *if* you specifically exclude local groups? The situation may be different in the UK, but here we have a wide variety of local distributions ("nj" for New Jersey, "ba" for the San Francisco Bay Area) and special-interest distributions ("alt", "biz", etc). A lot of the problems we're having with distributions relate to too many admins putting "all" in their sys files (hence "Car for Sale" ads going to the whole word, etc). If the net were static, it wouldn't matter. The difference between all, plus a lot of "!group" modifiers, and specifying groups explicitly, is what happens when someone adds new groups or new distributions. You'll either send by default, or not. Given the traffic explosion on the net, I suggest that not sending by default is a better move (do all your downstream neighbors want all the groups in the new "whizbang" alternate newsgroup hierarchy?). -- -- Joe Buck jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck
gordon@sneaky.TANDY.COM (Gordon Burditt) (03/16/89)
>What is wrong with 'all', *if* you specifically exclude local groups? Usually, not excluding ENOUGH local groups, and letting new local groups leak out before you find out about them. >stl:all,to.stl:: ># >stc:all,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:F: Didn't you forget "!to,to.stc" here? Even if you don't use ihave/sendme with stc, if you have ihave/sendme with ANYONE, you're likely to pass them around further than they should. ># >ukc:all,!stc,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:FL6: Forgot "!to,to.ukc" here. >#other sites fed not shown in this extract Also, do you really want to forward "junk"? Gordon L. Burditt ...!texbell!sneaky!gordon
news@wa4mei.UUCP (USENET admin) (03/19/89)
In article <8493@sneaky.TANDY.COM> gordon@sneaky.UUCP (Gordon Burditt) writes: >>What is wrong with 'all', *if* you specifically exclude local groups? > >>ukc:all,!stc,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:FL6: > I was under the impression that while inews was searching the sys file it would take the first match on the line which in this case would be all and then send the message. Wouldn't the correct order be: ukc:!stc,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup,all:FL6: ???? -- Randy Jarrett WA4MEI UUCP ...!gatech!wa4mei!rsj | US SNAIL: P.O. Box 941217 PHONE +1 404 493 9017 | Atlanta, GA 30341-0217
heiby@mcdchg.chi.il.us (Ron Heiby) (03/24/89)
dww@stl.stc.co.uk writes: > What is wrong with 'all', *if* you specifically exclude local groups? > ... > stl:all,to.stl:: > # > stc:all,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:F: > # > ukc:all,!stc,!stl,!local,!test,!general,!followup:FL6: > #other sites fed not shown in this extract Well, here are a couple of things wrong with it. For one, you are propagating "junk". For another, you are propagating all of the "to." newsgroups. So, if ukc sends a control message to you, it will also get sent to stc. This probably isn't intended. At least one of the sites I feed does something very similar to this. It really pisses me off when my control messages propagate where I don't intend and when control messages not intended for my site end up here. > If I'm not, then careful use of 'all' can make sys files much more readable > and thus easier to maintain. To sum up, I guess using "all" isn't all that bad, except that the people who use it don't know how. I don't mean this message as a blast against David. As I said, at least one of the sites I feed has made the same mistakes (as has at least one of the sites that *they* feed). -- Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.chi.il.us Moderator: comp.newprod "Life is indeed an inexplicable sequence of imponderable surprises."