dougw@fdls.UUCP (dougw) (12/29/89)
I have recently set up Usenet News version 2.11 under Unix System V, Release
2. Initially, I set up .newsrc files in the home directories of the 2 users
that will initially be subscribing to news articles. I have approximately
30 other logins that will not be subscribing to news at this time. Then, I
modified /etc/profile to use the checknews command with the -q option to
give a user an option to read their Usenet news during login if there is
unread news. Then, all heck broke loose when the 30 plus users with no
.newsrc file were asked if they wanted to read Usenet news. What appears
to be happening is that checknews reports there is news if there are news
articles stored on the computer and the users home directory contains no
.newsrc file. If the users answers yes to the "Read news?" prompt, I
execute vnews which then automatically creates a .newsrc file for the user
and they are passed through all the news articles without any training or
hint at what has happeneed to them!
Obviously, I have commented out the code in /etc/profile related to reading
Usenet news. I have done some experimenting with various .newsrc file formats
in an attempt to come up with a "this user does not subscribe to news -
`checknews -q` should always test that there is no news", but have had only
limited success. If this is the approach that should be taken, can someone
advise me on the file contents. Or, am I completely over looking another
news program feature that should be used for this?
Please send mail to 'uunet!fdls!dougw'. If there is enough interest,
I'll post a summary. Thanks a bunch.
Doug Walker
Oregon Department of Agriculture
Food and Dairy Division
635 Capitol Street NE
Salem, OR 97310-0110
(503) 378-3790
uunet!fdls!dougw