[news.software.anu-news] Restricted Newsgroups

gih900@csc.anu.oz (Geoff Huston) (08/21/89)

Michelle Thibault writes:

> We're running version 5.7 with VMS 5.0-2 and it has recently become an
>issue to make "private" newsgroups to replace a local conferencing
>system we are currently using.

The summary of this posting is that much of what you want is in V5.8A.

>*	The documentation claims that using the SET NEWSGROUP command with
>ADD/DELETE/...  MEMBER is "recommended" instead of using ACLs (SET
>ACCESS), but is there anyway to make an entire UIC group a member
>without using ACLs?
The "member" may be either a username or an identifier name, allowing
groups of users who have the same identifier.

> Also, how can one see who are members of a given
> newsgroup?? SHOW MEMBER requires that a username is given, so do you
> just have to type the ACCESS.NEWS file for that information, or is there
> a way to see it from inside news?

SHOW MEMBER/ALL or SHOW MEMBER *
 
>*	Also, is there any code in the later versions to prohibit
>unregistered users from reading these newsgroups?  Or even knowing of
>their existence.  (This includes over the network, as we have several
>sites which access news remotely.)

Yes - this is supported in V5.8A, including provision of excluding (or
explicitly including) access by NNTP clients. 
 
> I'm willing to find the latest version of news (5.9?) and write the
>code to deal with these issues, because we need them here, but I don't
>want to re-invent the wheel if somebody else has done this already.  ;-)
>Also, it would be nice to hear if other people have ideas about this and
>could use it.

You'll find this dully supported in V5.9 - if you do not have read access to a
newsgroup then you cannot see it's name in the newgroup directory.

Geoff Huston