Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Question about articles being mailed
Message-ID: <1098@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 88 02:39:36 GMT
References: <203@dvnspc1.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 39

In article <203@dvnspc1.UUCP> tom@dvnspc1.UUCP (Tom Albrecht) writes:
>
>Does anyone know why our news software started mailing articles?
>
>from the news log file:
>...
>   Dec  8 15:10	burdvax	received <18657@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> ng \
>     comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,comp.graphics subj 'GNUplot' from jsin@CS.UCLA.EDU
>   Dec  8 15:10	burdvax	Article mailed to comp-binaries-ibm-pc-d

 I know 8000 people will tell you this, but the problem is most likely that
your "mailpaths" file has either been trashed or removed. Articles posted
to moderated groups are ALWAYS mailed. The "mailpaths" file, among other
things, tells the software where to mail to. There is a set of sites (the
former "backbone") that accept postings to the newsgroup name with dots
replaced by dashes (as in the above example) and mail it to the moderator.
Other sites have a path to the nearest backbone site as the "backbone"
parameter in the mailpaths file, e.g.

backbone path!to!backbone!%s

If you had this line in your mailpaths file, then the article would be mailed to

path!to!backbone!comp-binaries-ibm-pc-d

This is what is supposed to happen for articles posted to moderated groups from
your site. You have two problems, however, for comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
is not a moderated group, but it must be marked that way in your active file.
Thus, all the postings that come in from the unmoderated group are getting
mailed, because your site thinks it's moderated.
   So, you need to do two things:

1) Put a backbone line in your mailpaths file, so that postings to moderated
   groups from your site will be properly sent to the moderator; and

2) Fix your active file, and make sure no unmoderated groups are incorrectly
   marked moderated.

--Greg