chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/12/85)
someone out there just created (bogusly, I assume, since there is no\
discussion or reason for it) net.bugs.0bsd. I'll be shipping a rmgroup
real quick, but the damaga has, of course, been done.
I've seen a LOT of silly and unneccessary newgroup messages recently,
folks. You don't NEED to send a control message to the world if you are
bringing your site up to snuff -- an editor (even ed!) and the mkdir
command work great. Please, don't send control messages out onto the net
unless you know what you are doing -- a minor slipup or typo (I know, good
programmers never mistyppe) can create a fair amount of pain for the rest
of the net -- something like 2000 sites worldwide now.
Please, be careful out there, or the rest of us have to deal with it as
well...
--
:From the offices of Pagans for Cthulhu: Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA
Who shall forgive the unrepentant?ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (05/12/85)
In article <2698@nsc.UUCP> chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: > >I've seen a LOT of silly and unneccessary newgroup messages recently, >folks. You don't NEED to send a control message to the world if you are >bringing your site up to snuff -- an editor (even ed!) and the mkdir >command work great. Please, don't send control messages out onto the net >unless you know what you are doing I have found out that when I need a control message that I don't want to be sent to the entire world, I just post it to our local control newsgroup instead of the worldwide "control" newsgroup. Every site has (at least it should) a local control newsgroup called "to.your_site_name.ctl", For instance, ours is called to.ucla-cs.ctl . (Don't look for it in the active file since it's not there). You can post any kind of control message (newsgroup, rmgroup, etc.) to it and the effect is the same as posting it to "control", except that it is not broadcasted outside your site. Next time, please think twice whether the control message you are about to send needs to be broadcasted to everyone or not. -- Eduardo Krell UCLA Computer Science Department ekrell@ucla-locus.arpa ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!ekrell
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (05/13/85)
Also, we saw a "net.newsite" creation. This group name does not show up in the latest list of valid newsgroups, so is it, too, a bogus creation? I run a splinter news system on a machine where we keep a limited subset of news groups. Our "sys" file has an explicit list of the groups we want. Yet we are continually getting these new bogus groups added to our "active" file, or other, valid but unwanted groups added there, and new directories are created for them. Nothing gets put in those directories, but I have to manually edit the junk out of our "active" file and rmdir those directories. Is there something I can do to prevent these creations from happening? The news documentation seems to expect that everybody will run a "complete" news system, and doesn't go into any detail on what to do when you want to maintain a limited version. Thanks for advice! Regards, Will Martin USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
bub@ames.UUCP (Bubbette McLeod) (05/14/85)
> I've seen a LOT of silly and unneccessary newgroup messages recently, . . . > Please, be careful out there, or the rest of us have to deal with it as > well... > -- > :From the offices of Pagans for Cthulhu: Chuq Von Rospach > {cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA > > Who shall forgive the unrepentant? This, from the person who created ba.woebegon out of spite?
john@x.UUCP (John Woods) (05/15/85)
> I've seen a LOT of silly and unneccessary newgroup messages recently, > folks. You don't NEED to send a control message to the world if you are > bringing your site up to snuff -- an editor (even ed!) and the mkdir > command work great. Please, don't send control messages out onto the net > unless you know what you are doing -- a minor slipup or typo (I know, good > programmers never mistyppe) can create a fair amount of pain for the rest > of the net -- something like 2000 sites worldwide now. > The problem is that the documentation for how to bring up news tell you to do exactly the wrong thing: you just run this magic shell script, which generates an infinite number of newgrps! Fortunately, when I installed news here, I caught these messages and killed them before they went out. Perhaps 2.10.3 could come with a more intelligent way of creating the news heirarchy? PULEEEZ??? Or perhaps control messages should be regarded as for local consumption only without some particularly excruciating explicit action. I've recently seen a number of postings and mail messages berating people for doing just what they were told to do by the documentation, and indeed, quite a reasonable-appearing thing to do if one is NOT ALREADY a netnews-wizard. (Consider: how many people bringing up netnews for the first time are going to be skilled netnews-wizards?) -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA "MU" said the Sacred Chao...