jkh@ski.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard) (12/19/84)
Uh, I was wondering if there was any mechanism whereby a leaf node
such as myself could tell my feed to not send any news under specific
groups. A simple file containing unwanted groups that the feed could
check would be nice. Is there any way to do this or something similar?
I know there's some way for the administrators at the feeding site to
do this, but it'd be nice if there was a way of not bothering them.
Any information would, of course, be appreciated (by mail).
Jordan K. Hubbard
Smith-Kettlewell Institute.
{ucbvax!mtxinu, ptsfa!politik, twg}!ski!jkh
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"I have another theory..."jkh@ski.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard) (12/26/84)
Ok, Ok.. A little while ago I sent out a message asking how to prevent
certain news groups from being sent to me. Now I admit, the subject line
was a bit too general a question, but I did clarify it in the message
by saying that I did indeed know about my feed being able to restrict the
newsgroups being sent to my site (that being clearly explained in the manual)
and that what I wanted was a way to restrict them from MY END.. Now ordinarily
I wouldn't post a follow-up like this, but I have received many messages
explaining the sys file (etc.) and even a flame or two questioning my
intelligence and ability to dress myself in the morning. Some of the replys
did contain other useful information (and I thank you for them) but otherwise
confirmed that what I want doesn't exist. Wouldn't it be nice to have a local
file (or perhaps a patch to the active file) that told the feed which groups
not to transmit (or vice-versa)? That way if you ever stopped being a leaf,
or just changed your mind, you could modify the file easily without bothering
your feed.. (news implementors: Hint hint!!) I'm really amazed that such
a feature doesn't already exist though.. Any wizards out there know of a
patch?
Jordan K. Hubbard
{twg, politik}!ski!jkh
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"I have another theory..."chip@t4test.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) (12/28/84)
> From: jkh@ski.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard) > Date: 26 Dec 84 18:47:53 GMT > > Ok, Ok.. A little while ago I sent out a message asking how to prevent > certain news groups from being sent to me. Now I admit, the subject line > was a bit too general a question, but I did clarify it in the message > by saying that I did indeed know about my feed being able to restrict the > newsgroups being sent to my site (that being clearly explained in the manual) > and that what I wanted was a way to restrict them from MY END.. I've spoken to other people about this problem before. We in fact suffer from it ourselves. I've got a few low-quality/high-volume newsgroups shut off because we can't justify spending the CPU on them. It seems to me that the best answer would be as follows: Add another field to the sys file. This field would be a newsgroup matching field, similar to current second field. The difference would be the second field describes the newsgroups a site is willing to send, and the new field would describe the newsgroups the remote site wants to receive. An article would be transmitted only upon a match of both fields. Here is the neat part: the remote system would be able to send a control message to the transmitting system to set the contents of this new field. Example: US:all:all:: THEM:net,fa,mod,usa,na:all,to.THEM:all:: "THEM" receives all net, mod, fa, usa, and na newsgroups from "US". One day "THEM" sends the following message to "US": Newsgroups: control From: usenet@THEM (USENET Administrator) Subject: cmesg changesys Distribution: to.US all,!net.flame The result of processing this message is as follows: US:all:all:: THEM:net,fa,mod,usa,na:all,to.THEM:all,!net.flame:: Voila! "THEM" has turned off "net.flame". Any comments on this idea, especially how tough the change would be? -- Chip Rosenthal, Intel/Santa Clara {cbosgd,idi,intelca,icalqa,kremvax,qubix,ucscc} ! {t4test,t12tst} ! {chip,news}