csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - E41) (04/11/91)
Hello fellow 'News Admins',
Our site is looking to provide a reliable news service to our many
users (several hundred and growing). We were wondering if there exists
a way to have backup/multiple news servers. This may seem at first
seem like a trivial problem which can be solved by having two or more
machines running the news server software (i.e. Cnews or Bnews). The
problem, however, is keeping article numbers 'in SYNC' between the
machines. By doing so, the .newsrc files will not loose track of
read/unread data. Ideas such as NFS mounts and shell scripts have been
tossed around, but they all seem like real KLUDGES. What I was
wondering is: Is there any way that the news server software could
'SYNC' article numbers between servers? Other methods of SYNCing are
also of interest.
If you are interested or have a solution, please send me a mail
message. If there seems to be significant interest, I will post a
summary.
Thanks in advance,
Chuck Smoko
csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil
PS: I also posted this question to news.sysadminnash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) (04/12/91)
In article <1991Apr11.113706.27287@relay.nswc.navy.mil> csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - E41) writes: > >Hello fellow 'News Admins', >Our site is looking to provide a reliable news service to our many >users (several hundred and growing). We were wondering if there exists >a way to have backup/multiple news servers. This may seem at first >seem like a trivial problem which can be solved by having two or more >machines running the news server software (i.e. Cnews or Bnews). The >problem, however, is keeping article numbers 'in SYNC' between the >machines. By doing so, the .newsrc files will not loose track of >read/unread data. Ideas such as NFS mounts and shell scripts have been >tossed around, but they all seem like real KLUDGES. What I was >wondering is: Is there any way that the news server software could >'SYNC' article numbers between servers? Other methods of SYNCing are >also of interest. > >If you are interested or have a solution, please send me a mail >message. If there seems to be significant interest, I will post a >summary. > > Thanks in advance, > Chuck Smoko > csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil > >PS: I also posted this question to news.sysadmin I believe one way is to set up site A as a master site. Site A gets all incomming feeds and in turn is the only site to feed site B. Site B would then get all the articles in the same order that site A gets them. The only drawbacks are 1) posting would not be allowed on site B. 2) no new incomming news would be received when site A is down. -- Ron Nash San Diego State University Internet: nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu Gin-N-Tonic 5 year old 1/2 Arab endurance prospect Luv on Fire 8 year old Arab, trusty steed and friend
fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (04/13/91)
> csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - E41) writes: >> We were wondering if there exists >> a way to have backup/multiple news servers. [...] The >> problem, however, is keeping article numbers 'in SYNC' between the >> machines. nash@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Ron Nash) writes: > I believe one way is to set up site A as a master site. Site A gets > all incomming feeds and in turn is the only site to feed site B. Site > B would then get all the articles in the same order that site A gets > them. I don't think it will work. Consider the case where an article shows up at A, then a cancel for it shows up before the article is passed to B. A will have used up a sequence number on the article, but B won't have. Even if you could get around this somehow, by for example not processing cancels or supercedes on A, this sounds pretty fragile. If the 2 machines ever get out of sync, you can't put them back together again. This will happen if B crashes at the wrong time and drops a single article, or one machine's disk fills up, or something like that. It sounds to me like the only solution would be to do it at the filesystem level: make a backup of A's news disk onto B every once in a while. This assumes that you can shut off news processing on A for a while every day so it's frozen, and that you can handle a *massive* network traffic between the 2 machines. You can still read news on A while the backup is going on, but you still can't post on B at all. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz