dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) (07/26/89)
To improve connectivity, and to allow localized reposts, I am looking
for a few redistribution points at well-connected sites. If you
are at a site that can do this, please send email.
Setting up a redistribution point involves the following (using
sendmail and BSD syntax; will vary for other environments).
1. Your site sets up a mail alias like this:
cbip: "| /usr/local/bin/cbip"
2. The program /usr/local/bin/cbip contains the following:
#! /bin/sh
/bin/sed -e '1,/^--REDIST CUT POINT--/d' | /usr/new/lib/news/rnews
It's very simple for the sysadmin to set this up. It creates a mail
alias called "cbip". This alias feeds all incoming mail, stripping out
the headers, to the news processing program "rnews", which is a link to
"inews". The result is that anything mailed to "cbip" gets fed back to
the news network at the redistribution point. Since the original
message-id is preserved, the resulting article will propagate only to
those sites that did not receive it already.
The above is *not* the same as a standard mail-news gateway, which
creates a new message-id for each incoming message and cannot be used
the same way.
If you are a sysadmin of a well-connected site, or know one who is
sympathetic, please let me know. The redistribution points will only
be used for selected postings that are lost, so there will be no
significant increase in network traffic.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi