[net.news] Non-Uucp Usenet

blarson@usc-oberon.UUCP (Bob Larson) (05/02/86)

What is needed to set up a non-uucp news and mail link?  (Using a
transport mechinism such as kermit.)  WHat I want is to set up a link
to my os9/68k system.  I realize that I would have to port or rewrite
all the news/mail software to my system, but I want to minimize
changes needed on any potential unix newsfeed.  I do realize an account
would need to be set up with rights to run some programs not normally
available to users.  (Sending mail beleiving the current header,
receiving mail for a system rather than a users id, posting news
beleiving the current header.)

Receiving news would be easy: just grab the appropriate files off of
/usr/spool/news.  Sending news would probably require running some
program after transfering the apropriate files.  (inews?)

News without mail is pretty silly, it causes problems like not being
able to post to mod groups and having to post things better sent as
mail.  What is needed for this?

(If this happens, I will probably become moderator of mod.os.os9, and
would consider getting PC Persuit and setting up some cross-country
connections so I would not be just another parisite node on usenet.)
--
Bob Larson
Arpa: Blarson@Usc-Ecl.Arpa
Uucp: ihnp4!sdcrdcf!usc-oberon!blarson

jbuck@epimass.UUCP (05/05/86)

In article <309@usc-oberon.UUCP> blarson@usc-oberon.UUCP (Bob Larson) asks:
>What is needed to set up a non-uucp news and mail link?  (Using a
>transport mechinism such as kermit.) 

Let's assume you want a Unix system running 2.10.2 news to feed your
OS-9 system, called foo-os9.  The easiest way is probably to have
your Unix host think it's shipping news as a batch.  You have news
create a file containing all the filenames of articles to be shipped
to your OS-9 system.  

With 2.10.2 news, distribution of articles are controlled by the "sys" file.
Add the following line to the file, with "groups" replaced by a
comma-separated list of groups or distributions ("net,mod" will send all
net-wide groups):

foo-os9:groups:F:/usr/spool/batch/foo-os9

What this does is to make a file named /usr/spool/batch/foo-os9
containing the filenames of all the articles to be sent to foo-os9.
Now all (!)  you have to do is to write a daemon that will wake up
every once in a while and transfer all those files to your system
using Kermit , where they are processed and inserted.  You could
either do this right (filling in Date-received headers and Path
headers and doing lots of checks), or as a shortcut, store the
articles on your OS-9 system unchanged (that is, don't add foo-os9 to
the path, just store each article as is).  To be able to post
articles, you could either do the complete job, meaning write your
own inews, or just ship the article text to your Unix system, and run
inews on it there.  If you take the simple approach your OS9 system
will look like part of your Unix system as far as news is concerned.

To do the full job, the "sys" line above suffices to get articles
from the Unix system to the OS-9 system.  Going the other way you
have to have an inews that can prepare proper rnews input, and be
able to ship articles to the Unix system via Kermit and have "rnews"
run on them there.

I hope this helps.
-- 
- Joe Buck <{ihnp4!pesnta,oliveb}!epimass!jbuck>
  Entropic Processing, Inc.
  Cupertino, California