[news.software.anu-news] NEWS v5.9 nntp_server

netmgr@csc.fi (Pekka Kytolaakso) (10/10/89)

I've now changed our newsserver to NEWS version 5.9. The server (it's main work
is mail (PMDF) and EARN (JNET)is a Microvax II with VMS 5.1 and CMU TCP/IP v6.4
.

The NNTP_CMUTCP server now writes all the items from one incoming connection to
one file. It used to split the incoming batches to less that 500 block files.
because the VMS update and NEWS version change too about four days we had quite
a lot of queued news and we've now got two batches ( one one Saturday and the
other on Sunday) each greater than 12000 blocks (You propably can guess that we
get about all Usenet newsgroups). i have a hacked newsadd that only adds ten
batches at a time to have enough free space to distribute traffic to five other
sites. These huge batches resulted bot in 5*12 000=60 000 blocks of temporary
files. I luckilly had enough room for them. The smaller batches from the older
version needeed at most 5*500=2 500 blocks temporary space.

I'm using nn (NoNews if Good News) as an agent to read news on a Sun
workstation. The POST command of the server seem's to have changed.
It now REQUIRES message-id, date and path headers that mini-inews, that comes
with nntp.1.5 dosnt supply, and this causes POST/Followup to fail.

There also is some trouble with the access check. I have nntp_access.news (or
whatecr it was) that allows everyone to read/post/transfer to/from any
newsgroup. When I try mini-inews with a file that has the needed headerfields
added the tranfser end in 'News not posted/posting to newsgroup no allowed'.
Is there some other accesscheck than the accessfile? I'll try to debug
the server to see what the problem is and will report if i find something
wrong.

Regards                  Pekka Kyt|laakso              
---------------------------------------------------------------
netmgr@csc.fi            Center for Scientific Computing, VTKK
NETMGR@FINFUN.BITNET     PL 40   SF-02101 Espoo FINLAND
Phone: +358 0 4571       Telex: 125833 vtkk sf
---------------------------------------------------------------

PS Some time ago there was a dicsussion about how to make shure only one
   add or skim is running at a time. It took us 3 months but we finally 
   figured an easy (an foolproof) way to do it. We gave news an own batch 
   queue with joblimit=1.

netmgr@csc.fi (Pekka Kytolaakso) (10/10/89)

In article <10.253106ce@csc.fi>, netmgr@csc.fi (Pekka Kytolaakso) writes:
> I've now changed our newsserver to NEWS version 5.9. The server (it's main work
> is mail (PMDF) and EARN (JNET)is a Microvax II with VMS 5.1 and CMU TCP/IP v6.4
> .
> 
> 
> I'm using nn (NoNews if Good News) as an agent to read news on a Sun
> workstation. The POST command of the server seem's to have changed.
> It now REQUIRES message-id, date and path headers that mini-inews, that comes
> with nntp.1.5 dosnt supply, and this causes POST/Followup to fail.
> 
> There also is some trouble with the access check. I have nntp_access.news (or
> whatecr it was) that allows everyone to read/post/transfer to/from any
> newsgroup. When I try mini-inews with a file that has the needed headerfields
> added the tranfser end in 'News not posted/posting to newsgroup no allowed'.
> Is there some other accesscheck than the accessfile? I'll try to debug
> the server to see what the problem is and will report if i find something
> wrong.

I did some debugging and found out, that the trouble is in handling headers.
i didn't find the reason but the symptom is that the newsline (\n) character
is left in the lines when they are put into headers[] array. It also is
there still when auth_list() get;s the newsgroup name in gl. When this
name is handled with util_cvrt it changes  '\n' to '_' and this makes
that the group doesnt exist. For example:

Newsgroups: sfnet.tets\n (finnish local testgroup)
gives auth_list('sfnet.tets\n',...) which then does 
      getgroupbyname('sfnet.test_') when it should do the
      test for sfnet.test.

Hope this helps.
Regards                  Pekka Kyt|laakso              
---------------------------------------------------------------
netmgr@csc.fi            Center for Scientific Computing, VTKK
NETMGR@FINFUN.BITNET     PL 40   SF-02101 Espoo FINLAND
Phone: +358 0 4571       Telex: 125833 vtkk sf
---------------------------------------------------------------

gih900@csc.anu.oz (Geoff Huston) (10/13/89)

In article <10.253106ce@csc.fi>, netmgr@csc.fi (Pekka Kytolaakso) writes:
> 
> I'm using nn (NoNews if Good News) as an agent to read news on a Sun
> workstation. The POST command of the server seem's to have changed.
> It now REQUIRES message-id, date and path headers that mini-inews, that comes
> with nntp.1.5 dosnt supply, and this causes POST/Followup to fail.

The NNTP RFC is VERY unclear about the responsibilities of the server and the
client in the format of the POST article contents... I was originally simply
treating a POST as a similar transaction to the IHAVE action, and the article
text was simply batched for later processing by the server. I then changed the
POST command to perform a similar action to the local POST command - i.e. parse
the header, check out that the required headers are present, etc.

This is all fixable. Can someone (Pekka?) provide me with a "typical" article
that the client will attempt to send following a POST command?

> There also is some trouble with the access check. I have nntp_access.news (or
> whatecr it was) that allows everyone to read/post/transfer to/from any
> newsgroup. When I try mini-inews with a file that has the needed headerfields
> added the tranfser end in 'News not posted/posting to newsgroup no allowed'.
> Is there some other accesscheck than the accessfile? I'll try to debug
> the server to see what the problem is and will report if i find something
> wrong.

Yes - in so far as the server now uses the remote client's username and node
name to perform local access checks on locally restricted newsgroups in
repsonse to the POST command.

Geoff Huston

> PS Some time ago there was a dicsussion about how to make shure only one
>    add or skim is running at a time. It took us 3 months but we finally 
>    figured an easy (an foolproof) way to do it. We gave news an own batch 
>    queue with joblimit=1.
I do it with

	$ SET ON
	$ ON ERROR THEN GOTO ABORT
	$ SET PROCESS/NAME="NEWS-ADD"
           etc