sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) (02/17/90)
In article <1769@fryeten>, doug@fryeten writes: > Some questions for discussion about distribution.... > > If the entire distribution of anu news were vmsshared how many files would it > involve at the default size? That depends on what you mean by the "entire distribution." Just the source for V5.9 takes about 75 parts. The documentation takes another 30 or so. If you include the MFTUed object libraries and .EXE files, that would probably add about another 150 or so. So lets say about 250 parts for the "entire distribution" as it is available for ftp. > Is it completely unreasonable to post major releases to this news group and > then post patches for minor releases? I've seen patches but they don't do > me any good until I get up to the correct version to patch. I wouldn't recommend posting the entire source to the newsgroup. Remember that the newsgroup (and the mailing list, which is gatewayed to it) go all over the world. There really isn't any reason to send the 1.2 megabytes of source to all 50,000 sites on usenet. Most sites can get the source in other ways. Remember that a lot of people are paying long distance phone bills to send this stuff. > If there is a large number of sections couldn't their distribution be spread > over a number of days to reduce the amount of load? The volume would still be there. Spreading the load out wouldn't reduce the time it takes, and long distance phone bills are based on time. > How many people are like me in a situation with no FTP and would benefit from > such a distribution? Do you have access to anonymous uucp? If so, the base source for V5.9 is available from uunet. Contact the people at uunet for more information. If you can't get the source from them, I can mail you the V5.9 BASE source and the patches for V5.9C. At least everyone in the world won't have to pay the phone bills that way. > Is what I'm suggesting extremely less efficient and more costly on the > whole than FTP and if so could someone explain briefly how FTP distribution > works in general? FTP distribution is very similar to anonymous UUCP. People who want to get NEWS via ftp contact kuhub via the internet using TCP/IP and download the files they want. > Are there other alternatives to VMS uucp sites or are we such a rare breed > that there is little interest? There are several alternatives way to get new versions of NEWS. There is a mail/ftp server on BITNET (BITFTP) that allows BITNET sites access to ftp. UUNET provides anonymous UUCP access and has the V5.9 BASE source. I have mailed V5.9 to several people and haven't heard of any problems. If you have some sort of network connection, I can probably get the latest source to you somehow. If all else fails, you can send me a 9 track mag tape and enough postage to mail it back to you, and I will put the latest version on it. Obviously I would rather avoid this last option if at all possible. :-) -- USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045 E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444 P.S. Doug: Your return address on this message is simply doug@fryeten. This is probably not replyable on most systems. Perhaps this should be doug@fryeten.UUCP? Of course the best thing to is to register a domain name. Look in the uucp docs for instructions on how to do this.