Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ukma!nrl-cmf!ames!amdahl!oliveb!jerry
From: jerry@oliveb.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Grading of UUCP news traffic
Summary: Just add another sys line entry
Keywords: Different UUCP grades for articles vs control messages?
Message-ID: <24867@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: 5 Jul 88 20:15:58 GMT
References: <7182@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <3122@bigtex.uucp>
Reply-To: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 51

I have been using ihave/sendme fairly extensively for a while now.
Sending the ihave and sendme messages at higher priority is an easy
modification to the news/sys file.

All you have to do is add another line to send articles in the
"to.remote" group using an explicit uux command.  Assuming the other
site is named "remote" you can add a line like:

remote-to:world,to.remote:BSUL:/usr/bin/uux -c -z -g0 remote!rnews < %s

To save you having to look all this up (and in case your uux doesn't
support some of these options) here is an explaination.  I used
"remote-to" for two reasons.  First, there are some subtle interactions
when you use more than one entry with the same site name.  Second, this
nicely separates the ihave/sendme traffic in my weekly news report.

The "world,to.remote" will match postings in the "to.remote" group.
This is the normal group that ihave/sendme articles are posted.  Note
that this will not send other articles including cancel or sendsys.
(Unless you post them in the "to.remote" newsgroup.)

The "B" flag means use "B" format news (the default).  The "S" flag
means execute uux directly instead of execing a shell to do it.  In
addition to being faster this avoids the need for quoting shell meta
characters in the third field.  The "U" flag means convert the %s in the
command to the permanent file name.  This avoids an extra copy of the
article.  The "L" flag means only transmit if the article was posted on
this site.  Probably unnecessary given the "to.remote" limitation but it
pays to be cautious.

The uux command has a "-c" option to avoid copying the input file.  This
reduces the queue size.  The "-z" option suppresses response messages.
Finally the "-g0" forces the grade to be "0", the maximum.  I want the
ihave messages to go first, even before mail.  This increases the chance
that they will process and return the sendme in the same connection.
Note also the absense of the "-r" option that would queue without
initiating the call.  You may want to adjust the grade or add the "-r"
option depending on the cost of the connection.

Extensive use of the "ihave" messages can result in your
"spool/news/control" directory getting quite large.  I have reduced this
somewhat by posting a single ihave message to multiple sites.  You may
also want to expire the control group early if disk space becomes a
problem.  Setting an expiration date on the articles might be a better
solution but generating a future date in a shell script sounds like more
trouble than it is worth.  An option to inews that let me set the
expiration date in days would be nice.  It would also be nice if inews
would record some information about sendme articles in the log file.  As
it is there is no direct way to monitor the number of messages
requested.
			Jerry Aguirre