Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: Many machines, one news system Message-ID: <525@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 16:50:26 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.525 Posted: Thu Nov 29 16:50:26 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 30-Nov-84 07:25:53 EST References: <1901@nsc.UUCP> <1816@sun.uucp> Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus Lines: 25 We use remote filesystems here on our Suns to avoid multiple copies. cbhydra (a Sun 170 fileserver) has /usr/spool/news and /usr/lib/news on the /pub filesystem, with appropriate symbolic links so they appear to be in /usr/spool/news and /usr/lib/news. /pub is mounted read only on the workstations and we can read news from either of them. We run the same binaries, which are also accessed over the net. inews is handled by having /usr/lib/news/inews on the fileserver by a shell script that rsh's it onto cbosgd - that way we hide the Suns and all news (like this article) appears to come from cbosgd. Works fine, as long as cbhydra and cbosgd are up. rnews is a link to /usr/lib/news/iinews, since inews itself is a shell script. There does turn out to be a problem here. vnews has a huge artfile that it keeps lots of info in. If you're reading vnews on a workstation and news is coming into the fileserver at the same time, the buffer cache on the workstation will be out of date, and you'll see an inconsistent artfile on the workstation (some blocks will be up to date and others won't.) I don't see a nice solution to this, and I don't know if NFS will solve it. Also, I understand there is a news server being developed experimentally at Berkeley. Mark