chevy@loligo (CC) (12/17/89)
This is a repost for a user without posting access. Please send all responses
to peterson@cs.fsu.edu or peterson@nu.cs.fsu.edu.
--
I am at a site that has limited Usenet access -- I have read and local posting
privileges only (my messages never get trasnmitted outside of the local
machine). This is by design, according to the SAs. At the same site, I have
unlimited Internet mail and FTP access. I was wondering if there was an
address at some site that I could mail my news postings to for distribution to
get around my lack of posting access here. I know of inidividual addresses to
send to to do this, such as urelay-amiga-relay@udel.edu for comp.sys.amiga. Is
there a site that lets you, say, include a "Newsgroups:" line in the header or
uses another mechanism of some sort? If there isn't such a site, is there a
list of relay systems such as the udel.edu system?
Please reply via E-mail and (guess what?) I'll summarize the respose if there
is interest. Thanks in advance for your help.
Eric
. |~~ Eric J. Peterson ... peterson@{cs,{nu,fsucs}.cs}.fsu.edu
_O_]
[ V "You cannot really know anything." -- William Payne (wpayne@digi.UUCP)
_< >_ "How do you know?" -- Dan'l DanehyOakes (djo@PacBell.COM)
Jeff Bauer bauer@loligo.cc.fsu.edu
Control Data Corporation (904) 644-2591 ext. 113peterson@NU.CS.FSU.EDU (Eric J. Peterson) (12/21/89)
In article <409@fsu.scri.fsu.edu> I wrote: >I was wondering if there was an >address at some site that I could mail my news postings to for distribution to >get around my lack of posting access here. I know of inidividual addresses to >send to to do this, such as urelay-amiga-relay@udel.edu for comp.sys.amiga. Is >there a site that lets you, say, include a "Newsgroups:" line in the header or >uses another mechanism of some sort? If there isn't such a site, is there a >list of relay systems such as the udel.edu system? As there was some interest in seeing the results of this request for information, and since there were a few interesting answeres mixed in with the most common solution, this article will summarize those responses. The overwhelming majority of mail that I did receive was similar to the following letter: From: msmith@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mark Robert Smith) | For any groups that they carry, you can send mail to | {groupnamealtered}@ucbvax.berkeley.edu with your article. | | {groupnamealtered} = the group name with all .'s changed to -'s. | | Like: | news-newusers-questions@ucbvax.berkeley.edu | comp-mail-misc@ucbvax.berkeley.edu | rec-ham-radio@ucbvax.berkeley.edu {note that the second - was already | there} | | etc. From the number of letters I received offering this solution compared to the total number of letters that I received, it appears that this technique is commonly known enough to be included in this summary. I received another letter that stated that mailing to the name of the newsgroup (with dots translated to hyphens) at ANY backbone site should work as well, but your mileage may vary. A few letters stated that not all newsgroups (notably the alt.* groups) could be reached through ucbvax. Another letter I received outlined a procedure for posting to a newsgroup through a particular site, but stated that I should not publicize the site or the procedure in any way, since the administration would likely disable it "at the slightest hint of abuse." Another letter made a similar, although not as drastic, comment regarding ucbvax. In light of this information, a good rule IMHO for posting to the News via ucbvax would be to post only when absolutely necessary and to try to find an alternate posting mechanism, using ucbvax as a last resort. Another solution to this problem came in this letter: From: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) | Get a modern newsreader like gnus or nn which lets you read news | from off-site and bypass your local SA's rules about posting. | Or pick up a copy of nntp from ucbvax.berkeley.edu and compile | up the 'mini-inews' there, and blast your articles off to a | willing site. | | If you have internet access it should be quite straightforward | to post news direct, you just need an NNTP server that's willing | to accept your incoming stuff. NNTP 1.5 is indeed available from ucbvax in the directory /pub/news/nntp in tared, compressed format. I was able to compile a new inews, although I was unable to locate an NNTP server to test it on, including one mentioned in the original letter. Therefore, I am uncertain as to the validity of this solution. I also received an interesting comment in a P.S. to one response ... From: mcb@presto.ig.com (Michael C. Berch) | P.S. Who are these administrators who won't let their users post | news... perhaps they should be held up to public ridicule? By coincidence, I received two more responses in a row immediately after that letter that seemed to respond to that statement ... From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) | You should talk with them before you seek to violate this--they | may be royally pissed with you and revoke what access you do have. | | No one can stop you from getting access to a Public UNIX system | (see pubnet.nixpub,alt.bbs) and posting from there; this | eliminates concerns about "undesireable opinions" being expressed | from "OUR" site. | | Technicalities: newsgroups can be categorized as unmoderated or | moderated; unmoderated newsgroups let you post directly, | moderated groups require that you mail submissions to a | moderator. Obviously, you can mail to any moderated group | whether or not you have usenet access. There is no officially | sanctioned way to submit material to unmoderated groups by mail. | However--since you are on the Internet, you can obtain a copy of | the "rrn" program and set the NNTPSERVER environment variable to | use any machine whose administration you can convince to allow | you posting privileges. ... and this one ... From: markc@wpi.wpi.edu (Mark B. Cohen) | I would caution against using this method at your site if your | SAs have explicitly prevented outside posting access. If the | sysadmins observe that articles originating from their sites, | you may very well find your external net privileges going away too. | | Keep in mind that *any* form of net access is a *privilege*, | not a right. Restrictions exist not only at academic institutions, | but also at corporations. One of the best examples is IBM. Although | IBM is a huge company, with an equally large internal network that | covers most of the country, and possibly much of the world, only a very | few users at a very few sites have any form of access to any other | network. | | Instead of trying to get around a valid restriction -- your SAs could | very possibly scan all outbound mail for a newsgroup name and cancel | it if one was recognized, although they'd be much more likely just | to shut off net access -- how about approaching them with a valid, calm, | and rational discussion as to why posting access should be made available. | | If the SAs are concerned about first semester freshman (if you are one, | nothing personal) jumping on the net during the first week of classes | and doing the sort of thing that they do (if you're not clear on this, | just wait until the beginning of september -- PSU's a very good example) | you could offer them the *source* to a program that could allow them to | explicitly state which users could or could not have posting access. | Such a program may exist somewhere on the net, otherwise, write one. | If you're not a programmer, I'm sure you have some friends who are. | | Sorry if this got a little long-winded. Try to keep in mind that | network access in any form is a relatively new thing for many schools. | It also costs a *lot* of money. Many administrations loosen up | after a year or two (or three.... :-). I believe that this last letter sums up the entire issue of circumventing posting restrictions. Good advice once again -- ask the SAs before doing anything that seems so relatively simple yet could be very serious. I just tried posting this message to our local backbone system uflorida (aka ufl.edu, aka bikini.cis.ufl.edu) with no success. I can only assume that it *doesn't* work for other backbone sites either. If you are reading this, it is through the ucbvax gateway. Thanks to all those who responded. Eric . |~~ _O_] Eric J. Peterson ... peterson@{cs,{nu,fsucs}.cs}.fsu.edu [ V "The ultimate goal of computer science is the elimination of COBOL." _< >_ -- Greg Riccardi, FSU Professor