cranor@udel.EDU (Chuck Cranor) (06/02/88)
Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the misuse of cross-posting on the net. The problem is that people "followup" to a crossposted article without thinking about what newsgroups their article is going to (and editing the Newsgroup line to fix it). The following patch will solve this problem by forcing a "Followup-To" line if the posted article is crossposted. Also, as an added bonus (for more radical sysadmins), if you #define FIX_XPOST, inews will also automagically add a "Followup-To" to news articles comming in from other sites. That will keep you from forwarding articles that are cross-posted with out a "Followup-To". [Note: inews will choose the first group in the "newsgroup" line as the target for followup. This may or may not be the correct group (9 times out of 10 it is), but I think it is better than not having a "Followup-To:" line at all!!]. Also, note that you can always redirect followups to more than one newsgroup, if you wish to keep the stream crossposted. BTW, I've been running inews with the patch applied for several days now with no problems. (news2.11, patchlevel #13). Chuck [now all we need is a something that will insert a virus in all binary postings.... :-) .... ] Directions: Goto your news2.11 source directory and apply the following patch by hand (yuck) or with Larry Wall's patch program. It only effects "inews.c". Then #define FIX_XPOST (in Makefile) if you want, and then "make inews" and re-install inews. *** oldinews.c Sun May 29 17:06:35 1988 --- inews.c Sun May 29 17:06:41 1988 *************** *** 942,947 **** --- 942,958 ---- goto writeout; } + #ifdef FIX_XPOST + if (index(header.nbuf,',') != NULL && strlen(header.followto) == 0) { + register char *ptr2 = header.followto; + ptr = header.nbuf; + while (*ptr != '\0' && *ptr != ',') + *ptr2++ = *ptr++; + *ptr2 = '\0'; + logerr("Xpost_Fixed: ngs %s, fup_to %s",header.nbuf, + header.followto); + } + #endif #ifdef ZAPNOTES if (STRNCMP(header.title, "Re: Orphaned Response", 21) == 0) { logerr("Orphaned Response, moved to junk"); *************** *** 1219,1224 **** --- 1230,1241 ---- } if (*filename) (void) fclose(infp); + if (mode != PROC && + index(header.nbuf,',') != NULL && + strlen(header.followto) == 0) + error("Article rejected: Cross-posted to ng %s,\n\t but %s.", + header.nbuf, "there was no Followup-To line"); + if (mode != PROC && linecount > LNCNT && linserted > (linecount-linserted)) error("Article rejected: %s included more text than new text", -- Chuck Cranor University of Delaware PHONE: (302)-451-6660 (UDel), (302)-737-5852 (home) ARPA: cranor@udel.EDU, UUCP: ...!<your_favorite_arpa_gateway>!udel.edu!cranor "I'd like to see John the Baptist's impersonation of Graham Hill." - R.J. Gumby
cranor@udel.UUCP (06/03/88)
In article <9518@g.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes: >For one thing there are discussions which *must* continue across >multiple groups. (For instance, discussions about new group proposals >are supposed to be cross-posted amongst all the interested groups.) Then direct the followups to more than one group (e.g. "Folloup-To: news.admin, news.software.b" ). >For another This is the wrong place to do it ... my roomate came up >with a perfectly acceptable way the other night. The control point >isn't the news software but the news reader instead. The news reader >starts you with a Newsgroups: of the newsgroup you are currently >reading, but leaves a header in place that has the original list of >newsgroups (for convenience). Most likely when you're making a >followup it will pertain most to the newsgroup you're reading, so this >will catch most cases. But if your followup pertains to many >newsgroups you can use editor commands to grab the newsgroup list from >the Original-Newsgroups: line and insert it in the Newsgroups: line. >To complete it you have something strip out the Original-Newsgroups: >line before feeding to inews. Not a bad idea. However, you must change all your news readers to do it! Since everything goes through inews, it is the easiest place to make the change. The main thing you are fighting is the inertia of the net. It takes time to go out of your way to update working software. [BTW, that's why having inews fix outgoing news is good. It helps to by-pass some of the massive inertia of the net. If just a few of the high speed NNTP sites (like UDel) start patching crosspostings with "Followup-To", then it will put a major dent in the crossposting problem...] Chuck -- Chuck Cranor University of Delaware PHONE: (302)-451-6660 (UDel), (302)-737-5852 (home) ARPA: cranor@udel.EDU, UUCP: ...!<your_favorite_arpa_gateway>!udel.edu!cranor "I'd like to see John the Baptist's impersonation of Graham Hill." - R.J. Gumby