chip@t4test.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) (03/03/85)
I just got caught up on all the stuff which came into net.sources. Boy, it
sure is a lot of crap! And to think, I'm chewing up so much diskspace
trying to archive this stuff. Egads!
Well, then allow me to propose *the solution* to the net.sources
problem. It's a radical one, so everybody hold onto your hats... Why
not use a moderated newsgroup for sources?
It seems silly to have hundreds of people throughout the world spending
hours weeding out their net.sources archives when we already have
one kind person (yay for john@genrad) who has volunteered to do the job
for us. I'd like to get a consensus among the net:
O people who have a good program will send it to mod.sources
O people will stop archiving net.sources and do only mod.soures
If you want to send me a vote great. If I can announce to the net that
mod.sources is the way to reach people, then we should start seeing
sources go there. If you want to flame about moderators, facism (sp?)
and censorship, then send me mail. Please don't subject the rest of
the world to it. (I'll even tally up those comments too.)
Please, if you would like to see all the archive quality sources going to
mod.sources then press that 'r' key.
--
Chip Rosenthal, Intel/Santa Clara
{cbosgd,idi,intelca,icalqa,kremvax,qubix,ucscc} ! {t4test,t12tst} ! {chip,news}gregbo@houxm.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (03/06/85)
Another way for net.sources/mod.sources to work is to just make it a request news-
group. People can post stating "mysource version x.y.z is available". They may
proceed on giving out information on how to access the source, for example, giving
out their anonymous ARPA password and indicating the locations of the files, or
giving out the uucp password and telling what files to access, or just supplying a
reply address where people can request that copies of the sources be distributed by
mail. This could be even better than net.sources/mod.sources as it currently is,
because the source requestors can specify tar/cpio format, sources vs. binaries,
whether they need all or parts of it, etc. This could even apply to the postings of
the news and uucp maps.
Just a thought.
--
... hey, we've gotta get out of this place,
there's got to be something better than this ...
Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{allegra,cbosgd,ihnp4}!houxm!gregbo
gregbo%houxm.uucp@harvard.arparpw3@redwood.UUCP (Rob Warnock) (03/07/85)
+--------------- | ... I'm chewing up so much diskspace trying to archive this stuff. Egads! | ...Why not use a moderated newsgroup for sources? | It seems silly to have hundreds of people throughout the world spending | hours weeding out their net.sources archives... | Chip Rosenthal, Intel/Santa Clara +--------------- While "mod.sources" would help if everybody switched over, I have another method that might be useful until the millenium arrives. Instead of archiving junk and then having to weed it out, let your own local readers act as the "moderator" of what gets archived. That is, nothing gets archived unless somebody ASKS for it to be archived (doesn't have to be the sysadm.) Since presumably SOMEBODY reads net.sources regularly, all the "good stuff" will be seen at least once before it expires. It could also pick up "really good stuff" from other groups than net.sources, keeping people from saving multiple copies of large articles in other groups. Implementation: Since the environment variable "$A" is set to the full-path of the article during shell escapes (at least from "vnews"), a simple "!newsarch" shell script can be used to record peoples' desire to keep an article around. (Yes, it's deliberately a long name, both to avoid clashes with other names and to discourage archiving everything.) One (possibly TOO simple?) implementation of "newsarch": : 'newsarch - make a note of reader interest in a news article' exec echo User: "${USER-$LOGNAME}" File: $A >>/usr/spool/net/arch.request A little hacking with "awk" and "sort -u" and "ln", and VOILA! -- you have your "moderated" archiver. A little more work on "newsarch" and you can warn folks if articles from a certain group aren't "allowed" to be archived (of course, they might just end up "saving" them, which doesn't help your disk any). The "User:" stuff helps keep track of who saves what, if you need to for administrative reasons. (Obviously, for more security one makes "newsarch" a setuid-news C program.) (Actually, since "redwood" is mostly a single-user site, I cheated and did it even simpler for myself. I use the script "varc", shown below, since as I "archive" stuff I also want to file it into catagories by name. The tree /usr/spool/file/... roughly maps to the newsgroups that get a lot of filing activity. News catagories are created on-the-fly with "!mkdir <catagory>;varc <catagory>/<savedname>", etc. The use of "ln" means that I get warned of name conflicts.) Rob Warnock Systems Architecture Consultant UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax!dual}!fortune!redwood!rpw3 DDD: (415)572-2607 USPS: 510 Trinidad Lane, Foster City, CA 94404 ====== Attachment: /usr/local/varc ===================================== : varc - 'hack to archive articles from within news (actually vnews).' # Totally specific to system "redwood", which has /usr/spool on a # separate filesystem. # # Since the "s"(ave) command works from vnews, there is no reason to # worry about saving the article anywhere else but in /usr/spool/file, # since I can always type "s foo" for elsewhere... # # Assume the article is currently available in the environment as $A... case "$A" in "") echo 'No $A in environment! (*burp*)' exit 1;; esac case $# in 1) : o.k. ;; *) echo 'usage: varc pathname' exit 1;; esac ln $A /usr/spool/file/$1 # let "ln" complain about further problems ls -l /usr/spool/file/$1 # just for a warm feeling
chip@t12tst.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) (03/08/85)
~| From: chip@t4test.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal)
~| Date: 3 Mar 85 07:40:14 GMT
~|
~| I just got caught up on all the stuff which came into net.sources. Boy, it
~| sure is a lot of crap! Well, then allow me to propose *the solution* to
~| the net.sources problem. Why not use a moderated newsgroup for sources?
I've received over a dozen responses to the above message. I will summarize
them and issue a followup next week. If you have any concerns on this issue,
please drop me a line. Even if it is simply to say "yes" or "no".
The responses so far are overwhelmingly in favor of a high-quality
mod.sources. If you take a moment to send me your comments, maybe we can
build a consensus on this.
Thanks to those of you who have written.
--
Chip Rosenthal, Intel/Santa Clara, (408) 496-7651
{cbosgd,idi,intelca,icalqa,kremvax,qubix} ! {t4test,t12tst} ! {chip,news}