wmartin (01/07/83)
Did this message ever get out to USENET? Note that it is about a month old, but I haven't seen any followups on "net.news" on this host, nor have I gotten any direct replies. This host has been down a lot due to TCP testing, and I think it is affecting how USENET works here... From: brl-bmd!wmartin (Will Martin ) Newsgroups: net.news Title: Starting up on netnews Article-I.D.: brl-bmd.471 Posted: Thu Dec 2 14:07:39 1982 Received: Thu Dec 2 14:07:39 1982 Greetings! We here at the US Army Development and Readiness Command Automated Logistics Management Systems Activity (DARCOM ALMSA for short) have recently got a VAX 11/750 up and running under UNIX. When we get the autodialer hardware and whatever else is necessary, we should get this beast into USENET. What do we do first? How do we find a host on the net now which would be willing for us to call in and extract the news (I assume each night)? Since we are in St. Louis, and I don't know of another local USENET host, we would have to call long-distance; in that case, we would be better off calling some major node directly in order to be assured of getting all the news items (the host I am sending this from - BRL - though another Army site and therefore a desirable one to interact with, seems to miss getting netnews every few days, probably due to it being where it is in the net heirarchy). Also, there is a good possibility that our site may become the main distribution point for netnews to a growing number of Army UNIX machines, since we traditionally are a main software support and distribution organization for the Army logistics community. These should be good reasons for calling directly into the heart of netnews distribution, but of course this is an imposition on the called host -- we eat up resources there when making this connection. When we initially start up, do we get all the unexpired news items on the called host automatically, or just what is being circulated currently? If the latter, is there a way to do the former? I am the only one here at this activity who knows anything about the USENET newsgroups, but I am not directly involved with software/hardware support and maintenance on the VAX. I think I am going to have to serve as a conduit between the net sources of info and the support staff for some time. That is why I am asking these questions now. Regards, Will Martin