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cache on the workstation will be out of date, and you'll see an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