system@aurum.chem.utoronto.ca (System Admin (Mike Peterson)) (12/17/90)
In case any Apollo sites are wondering about USENET news software,
I would like to report that we have been running nntp (version 1.5.7),
C News (now up to the 15-Dec-1990 patch), and rn (now up to patch 52)
on our systems for about 6 months. While nntp had to be hacked on
somewhat to make it work, C News and rn are straight out the box
(from ftp sites 'cs.utoronto.ca' and 'uunet.uu.net' respectively).
For C News and rn you will need to "build" and "Configure" respectively
your site - I can supply my "build.def" and "config.sh" files to
anyone interested. Note: up to and including rn patch 50, you needed a
special version of the "Configure" script to make it work, but
the latest patches now handle the Apollo shared libraries properly.
(Note: we use the BSD environment exclusively, but C News and rn
should also work in a Sys5 environment with proper configuration.)
I have sent in the nntp changes to make it work on the Apollo,
but nntp has been in such a state of flux for the past several months,
including several versions with bad bugs, and several
new features that I know will not work on Apollo (e.g. SETPROCTITLE),
that I have not tried to upgrade to a more recent version. I intend
to try this in the new year though, and will post a followup then.
I'd like to hear from people running later versions of nntp, and what
they had to do to it to make it work.
We have also set the ORGANIZATION environment variable to be what news
thinks it should be; this will of course break any program/script that
expects $ORGANIZATION to contain the user's organization from the
registry - we don't use this for anything (all our accounts have
organization 'none', which is most appropriate and usually true :-) :-) ).
In addition, we have rn running on every node, with /usr/spool/news
being a link to the master news node (a DN10000) - the only changes
made to have this work is to copy the "active" file from the master
node onto the local node every 15 minutes and to supply a fake version
of 'inews' (for posting). Note that the internode
locking of files will hang your news feed if you link the "active"
file from a remote node, since the master node will be unable to lock
the "active" file for itself if anyone is reading news anywhere.
We are also planning to use rn on non-Apollo systems, which will
mount the /usr/spool/news directory via NFS (again keeping a local
copy of the "active" file and a fake 'inews').
Here is the crontab entry to run "/usr/local/bin/Copynewsactive"
(do NOT use this on the master news node):
# Copy the news active file onto remote nodes every 15 minutes.
0,15,30,45 * * * * news /usr/local/bin/Copynewsactive
Here is the file "/usr/local/bin/Copynewsactive":
#! /bin/sh
#
# Copynewsactive - copy the news 'active' file from the master node.
#
# Usage: Copynewsactive
#
# Problems found by this script should be mailed to a system
# adminstrator.
#
host=`hostname`
admin=system
newsadmin=usenet
#
# Copy the news 'active' file, provided the master 'active' file can be
# reached.
#
masternews=alchemy
activefile=/usr/local/lib/news/active
masteractivefile=//$masternews$activefile
if [ -f $masteractivefile ]; then
if [ -f $activefile ]; then
/bin/rm -f $activefile
fi
/bin/cp -p $masteractivefile $activefile
fi
#
exit 0
#
# End of Copynewsactive.
#
Here is the remote node file "/usr/local/bin/inews":
#! /bin/sh
#
# Fake inews to invoke inews on the news master system.
#
masternewshost=alchemy
#
rsh $masternewshost inews "$*"
Thanks to glee@tigris.uucp, watcher@athena.mit.edu,
attctc!digi!kcantrel@eddie.mit.edu, dclemans@mentor.com and
dave@vlsi-mentor.jpl.nasa.gov for ideas on how to make rn work
on remote nodes.
--
Mike Peterson, System Administrator, U/Toronto Department of Chemistry
E-mail: system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca
Tel: (416) 978-7094 Fax: (416) 978-8775